Shadowspawn
by euphorbic
Summary: A quarter drow, half mad, three quarters human, and fully dramatic, Shadash is the jewel in the crown of a Calimport teahouse, where the only thing not for sale is his freedom. A series of scenes of varying length, with increasingly disturbing themes.
1. shadowspawn

Disclaimer: The recognizable settings in this fan fiction are property of the legal entity Wizards of the Coast (WotC). The setting, specifically that of Calimport, is used without permission but no material profit of any kind is being made from the following work. WotC reserves rights to Forgotten Realms material, but all of the characters and situations unique to this work of fan fiction are property of the writer. So there.

Foreword by WitchWolf

_It all started out pretty innocently - I was doing my usual share of bitching about yet another gaping plot hole I needed fixed in my story, euphorbic was kind enough to listen and give tips. And, at one point, toss an idea she had for a character. I liked the outline so much, I bit and swallowed it all, bait, hook and the stick in tow. _

_What followed were the most furious six hours of email shooting I've ever had, during which the ideas were flying back and forth at dizzying speed. Day two, and we had pretty much everything nailed down, from physical to psychological aspects of the character, plus a fully done, detailed background as well. Day three, the first story came up and the moment I read it I realized that it was everything euphorbic and I talked about plus a ton on top. _

_Ever since, the stories kept coming, and I kept purring, proud of playing a small role of my own in all this. The credit's all euphorbic's; I just said a few good things at the right time._

Author's Note: The idea for these scenes was inspired by inside knowledge of Witchwolf's fic, _The Clash of Shadows_. It is important to note that the tone gets steadily darker and more twisted after the first installment.

* * *

_shadow-s-pawn_

The boy's dark fingers worked the upright sitar's strings with all the honesty his lips lacked. His left hand moved quickly over the sound box, plectrums finding the notes he wanted singularly or in unison. His right hand moved up and down the fret board, slender fingers nimbly pressing down at all the right points, timing in perfect union with his left.

Somewhere behind him skilled hands were hitting a drum's skin with professional accuracy, keeping pace. Though no chorus of hands was clapping in double time, the teahouse's cool interior resounded with the sound anyway. This was the doing of the drummer and was at a volume the boy found amazing. Bardic magic was in the air; it tingled at the bridge of his nose like the promise of a long lingering sneeze.

The music wove a frenetic pattern inside the house that seeped into the occupants' blood. The shadowed musician's head moved from side to side with the flow of music and the energy's sinuous movement. It never ceased to remind him of the snakes that sometimes slithered along his body when he danced.

The speed of the rhythm and overwhelming beauty gathered at the base of his spine, slowly climbing a ladder of vertebrae until he felt he could no longer contain the beauty. Opening his mouth, he let the feeling flow forth from his throat, given wondrous shape by his voice.

Shadash sang in a language only he knew. It was a language he spoke since childhood, one that came straight from his heart that no creature alive had heard before. According to the singer, it was a language of one from a race of one: the mysterious language of Shadash, known as Shadashite. When he sang in his personal language, he gave voice to the inner terrain of his long-shattered heart. Nobody sang about pain more eloquently than the young dancer that was one of the jewels in Dancer's Gate, a small district within Calimport's many subterranean teahouses that offered more than herbal infusions to dizzy the senses.

And who but a boy with mismatched eyes spawned of a dead-eyed whore, rented to Loviatarans in childhood, with no trust in his heart for anything but the most simple-minded creatures, could have more words for agony? He had a word for every shade and variation with all their subtleties. There was _fallel_, the sting of soapy water over chafed flesh. Or _kaches_ the pain of muscles torn under impatient hands. The worst was _sarmortpeth_, the pain of a heart when a beloved feline caught and killed an equally beloved songbird. He preferred all other pain to the pain of the heart.

Shadash knew better than to sing solely of pain, for it drove his bardic mentor to heavier drinking. He was smart enough to learn from a drunk, but took more from the man when he was less inebriated. A falling down, mind altered drunk was problematic and not to Shadash's liking; unless it got the entertainer out of specific services he didn't prefer performing.

Before he took his musical mentor too far into despair, he turned from his personal tongue to that of Calishite and spun out defiant lyrics.

"_When you held out your hands  
mine did not complete the frame  
they worried your threads,  
bore delicate fires,  
flew down my throat,_

_until my breast was glowing_

_When you held out your hands  
I saw the hungry space  
between your fingers,  
stiffening my legs,_

_leaching my warmth,_

_until my corpse was frozen_

_When you held out your hands  
I knew an itching in mine  
a field of beige,  
lattice of dark lines,  
stinging red palm_

_until your cheek was matching"_

The last notes of his voice lingered within the in the room before he opened first an eye of startlingly emerald green and then the more malevolent one of pale red. Shadash looked out of the shadowed depths into the noonday crowd that had escaped Calimport's blistering heat. In the underground establishment the air was much cooler; a welcome respite. A wide range of races of both genders sat within the teahouse, many were regulars that came for refreshments, but more came for the entertainment.

Fingers still dancing across his sitar, but now at a calmer pace, Shadash called out in the impishly defiant way that drew in his wealthy predators. "I won't hesitate to slap the face of anyone who tries to hold my hand."

Many people laughed at the obvious lie, for the regulars all knew that the dancers and musicians had a price. Exotic young Shadash, with his dark chocolate skin, mismatched eyes, and long list of entertaining skills was in the upper echelons of the middle-rung entertainment district.

He was an entertainer and without a patron to claim him exclusively, anyone could avail themselves to his private attention. As long as the house's price could be met. Many in the audience could meet that price, he noted, but it hardly mattered; Shadash was never without a patron for long.


	2. a morning in the life

A/N_: These do start out pretty bleak, but there are humorous scenes in the future._

_

* * *

one morning_

He was dozing, his head full of the beach away from the port and the few chances he'd had the pleasure of lying in the hot sand while warm waves lapped at his legs. Curled listlessly among tangled sheets, made damp by more than perspiration, he imagined the sodium scent assaulting his nose was sea air. The blunt finger tracing the outline of bleached-beige skin on his back was just sea grass blowing in the wind.

When the bed shifted, his daydream fell away and dropped him back into his unusually dark skin. Again he was the boy with the mismatched eyes, lying with a hungry man that was previously on his back. The man gave him red jewels to wear in his hair and red ribbons that ran down his skin from opened veins.

Today there was relatively little pain; he needed a different room for such activities and it was not available. There were jewels of real value instead: new earrings. Hanging from his ears were circles of gold, one studded with spokes of emerald the other with rubies. His ears were hot with the blood that flushed them when his casually cruel patron had pierced the flesh with the earrings' dull hooks. He had hissed convincingly, even though the injury lacked imagination.

Shadash pushed himself up and twisted alluringly over his legs to observe his latest patron. "Do you go to work?"

The heavy set man smiled wickedly as he looked on the boy displayed in nothing but silk and sparkling jewelry. "Of course, but today is our special monthly inventory. I'll be out late tonight."

Knowing the smuggler's code, Shadash pouted magnificently and threw himself upright to tackle the much larger and older rogue. "And that's your lousy excuse for coming to see me for hardly even half an hour, two whole hours before noon? Do you know what it takes to wake me up? You better bring me half of what you slip into the city tonight!"

Enjoying the boy's youthful enthusiasm and realistic performance, the man gripped Shadash's hair and pulled him back slowly. The sight of his slender throat was mesmerizing.

"What would a spoiled brat do with five crates of black opium? Skinny thing like you would kill yourself on cracked fantasies in less than an hour. No, let me sell it and buy off your debt when I return."

Now there was an original line. Almost all his patrons promised to buy him out of Dancer's Gate, but not one had ever mentioned the idea to the management. Shadash was full of sneering indignation, but tumbled gracefully from the bed. He played the part of hopeful lover as he helped the man into his clothing. "Do you really think you'll be able to buy my debt?"

"Of course," he rumbled, taking the boy's helpful motions for granted and thinking nothing of the secrets he was spilling. "I'll have enough to buy your contract two or three times."

"Hah!" The boy scoffed. In a huff he let go of the man's clothes and yanked his thick beard scornfully. "Obviously you've never asked how much my debt is! It would take more than five crates of black opium to pay it off!"

The childish tug on his beard angered the man, but it was exactly that sort of impassioned daring on Shadash's part that made the entertainer more desirable. Both willing and defiant, the boy was a complex amalgam of conflicting emotions and desires. He seized the boy's kelp-green hair again and brought his slightly pointed ear close to his mouth.

"Have you not heard about the black market trade war? The poppy fields black opium comes from have been razed, turned, and sown with salt. The going rate has doubled and redoubled every week for the last four tendays. I could buy one of the Caliph's daughters if I wanted one."

"You wouldn't," Shadash hissed, pulling his head free; his hair was too sleek to hold against his will. "I've ruined you for such sheltered congress. Come back and buy my debt tomorrow or I'll hunt you down."

Harsh, but honestly amused laughter resounded through the small room. "Ah, such threats! What will you do when you find me?"

"Tell me where to find you and you'll see," he challenged silkily. "_You should fear me_," he said, swaying slightly, his lips turning the threat into a snippet of song. And in that song was the magical suggestion he had only recently learned he could implant. "_You should fear me, you should obey. Where will you be, for me to slay?_"

It was not odd for the boy to turn all sorts of random phrases into bits of song. It was a habit that often reminded his patrons very forcibly of his youth. They treated him as a full grown sex object, though all were certain he was not yet the human equivalent of seventeen years.

"Yarwah's Niche," the man snorted gruffly. "Don't let me find you there or I'll twist that slender neck of yours until both eyes are red."

"Yarwah's Niche?" Shadash shot back. "Even if I could get away, that's the last place I would go. I've heard that place smells like a thousand sun-rotted fish and two thousand drunken beggars. If you go there, the stench will get you before I do! You better take a bath before you come to buy my debt tomorrow or I'll refuse you."

The smuggler shook his head and let the boy's suddenly helpful hands wind his headscarf for him. He had to admit, since taking up with Shadash, his pocketbook had floundered, but his appearance had improved dramatically. Dark skinned hands nimbly wound and tucked cloth with perfect accuracy and unexpected style. "Perhaps I'll come and let you remove the stench yourself."

"I'll never forgive you," the boy shrugged. "My first act as a free citizen will be to slap your ugly face."

Chuckling at these antics like a giant in the face of a flea's aggression, the man tousled the boy's dark hair and needlessly smoothed down his clothing. "Tomorrow evening, Shadash. Dedicate a song and dance to me and I'll be there before you're done."

"Liar," the boy snorted, throwing a satin slipper past the man's head as he walked out. He stood silently for several moments before he quietly repeated the sentiment. He had no doubts that the smuggler was imagining Shadash dedicating a song to him, only to humiliate him by not showing up. The young dancer was not so naïve as to fall for such foolishness.

Gathering up his clothes and other belongings, he slipped from the room and into the hall. Barefoot on the cool stone floor outside the room, he cawed softly and waited. A winged shadow responded, flapping sleek black wings as it flew through the echoing expanse.

Rather than land on his wrist or hand, the large raven swept over his shoulder and onto an unlit lamp. Shadash stretched up to scratch the bird's neck under the black feathers while whispering soothing words in his personal language. "Go to Marya. Marya."

Marya would know to come to him with a guild's full purse and an open ear. She valued information from Shadash's patrons in particular.

The raven bit at the boy's fingers, but this was only affection. Soon she was winging across the empty room to dive up and through the hole in the ceiling that let natural light form a spotlight in the performance area. Soon, very soon, Shadash would need a new patron.


	3. slither

A/N: I've always disliked characters like Shadash, but I was determined to write one anyway. Little did I know the little bastard would grow on me. Next chapter: animal instinct.

* * *

_slither_

In the darkness of the underground wine house it was cool and hushed with an air of expectation. The regulars knew what was coming and had no qualms hushing those that did not understand what it meant when a serpent dance was to be performed by the jewel in the teahouse's crown.

Bright sunlight streamed down into the middle of the room, slanting to the side with the angle of the afternoon sun. It was around the beacon of light the entire room, broad in expanse but low of ceiling, was centered. The bar, the fine rugs, the low unlit tables and couches, faced the area where performances were held. For while drinks and light repasts brought in ample coins, the establishment thrived on the money their entertainment brought in.

Every eye was drawn to the oblong circle and cylinder of white light that struck the stone floor pale glowing yellow. For the uninitiated, the silent anticipation reached for uncomfortable heights of stillness. Just as they began to fidget with their wine or tea or shift their weight from one side to the other, there was a sound.

A single sibilant note filled the room, caressing the crowd and reaching the short distance to the ceiling, and reverberating throughout the space. A steady flow of equally pleasant notes soon followed. The lyrics sounded familiar, but no one understood the language they were sang in. The voice alone could satisfy even a harsh critic, but it did not arrive alone with the somber song that conveyed loss and heartache.

Into the beam of light came the slow advance of a white snake's head and sinuous body. Four feet from the ground in the blackened room, the serpent seemed to slither through the sunlight itself. Then came a foot, dark as Calimshan coffee, adorned with a heavy gold anklet studded with red jewels and crimson tassels. Following it came a slender leg and then another equally dressed foot.

Wiry young arms, encircled by gold and red bangles, supported the snake's body. The whole figure stepped in behind his jeweled arms; a vision of darkness wrapped in white coils, a filmy length of pale silk belted low on his abdomen. He stood, sensual lips shaping the full sound of his voice as it flowed from him and filled the room. Not an eye in the house was ambivalent to the dark vision or the brilliant white scales that spiraled around his arm and chest.

An increment at a time, the dancer raised his hands, and the white python with them, up to reach for the untouchable sun. His voice rose with his wide-splayed hands, until it was certain that even without understanding his words the dancer wanted the sky. Face raised, bathed in light, his eyes finally opened. Pupils reduced instantly in size until large discs of red and green floated on the whites of his eyes.

He bit the song off with a clash of white teeth and suddenly he was twisting around on the ball of one foot. In the darkness beyond, sitar and tabrets made themselves known, while the sound of drums came in low and strong.

Like the voice that had flowed around the room, so did Shadash's body attain a fluid affect. Twisting and rolling his slender body within the coils of his partner's embrace, he captured and reeled in the gazes of his audience. He spiraled his body in arcs that spun out wide one way, then reversed in a slow corkscrew that brought him nearly to the floor.

Feeling keenly the slick scale-covered muscles that gripped and pushed against him, he followed the white python's travel, setting them both to the music. He sent his arms into undulating movements that enhanced the sight of the graceful snake as it quested its blunt head into the air above Shadash's shoulder. In the next instant, the boy was spinning upwards, hands raised over his head to form a bridge for the serpent's forward motion. The python moved up one arm and down the other, locking his arms more securely than any patrons.

His arms were dark, striped in thick white, and formed a nearly perfect hoop which he rotated around, up, and over his head time and again. At the same time, light-footed steps took him around the perimeter of the bright circle on the floor. The crimson tassels and silk cords on his anklets jumped drunkenly around his complicated and often blinding footwork.

Yet, when the music slowed, he slowed with it. His motions became unbearably lethargic, but no less fascinating. He moved in time with the python's slow caress. Arms still high, the snake began to wrap around the boy's torso on its way to the floor. Shadash moved with the serpent; as it spiraled around his body clockwise, he spun counterclockwise while undulating his body in sensual arcs.

The snake, only dimly aware of being in a performance, appreciated the way these undulations sped its travel. When it encountered too slick silk below the dancer's smooth belly, it nudged the cloth aside. It had no interest or idea that when it ducked its head under the silk over the boy's loins that it would excite the body heat of the general populace.

For his part, the dancer thought nothing of a snake beginning to circle one leg, he simply lifted the leg in question so his bare foot pointed out at the audience. The assemblage could easily see the python slithering over his thigh, while his opposite leg muscles strained with his foot to keep him in a continued rotation. His arms wove in the air, simulating the snake's sinuous movement and helped the creature's tail leave his arm more quickly.

With his arms free, it was easier for Shadash to spin on the flat of his foot and gently guide the python's head toward the floor. The moment the snake's head touched the warm stone, the music died away and Shadash slowly bent his body forward and gracefully swept his leg up and over his head. The snake's head was lifted from the floor and hung, suspended over the dancer's arched back.

Balance and flexibility was critical, but in this way Shadash could hang the python over his head and turn his face up to plant a soft kiss beneath its chin and flickering tongue. In the contorted position, his body was highlighted in all its youthful beauty. He held the pose for several torturous moments, allowing the rapt audience time to understand his dance was at a close.

When the applause began, Shadash brought his body up and his leg down, gathering up as much of the serpent as he could. When he had the sun-warmed serpent in his arms, he dipped into a shallow bow and sauntered out of the ring of sunlight. He made his way out of the room slowly, taking his rounds past all the low tables, shaking the heavy tassels hanging from his belt with twists of his hips. Hands caressed his body, lips expressed their appreciation, and coins slid under his belt. Gold coins, the locals knew, would be taken in the boy's teeth. He was known to nibble at fingers if he thought there was more than one to be found. For gems of high worth, Shadash was even known to give his undivided attention to his benefactor, sometimes including him or her in his performance.


	4. animal instinct

A/N: Please note that I'm posting these scenes in the order I wrote them and that order is not chronological by any means. Anyway, this particular scene was an experiment with imagery and a more poetic structure. Most of these scenes were studies or experimental in one way or other.

* * *

_animal instinct_

Warm sunlight was baking skin the color of rich soil and setting off fire within the dark red jewels strewn through tresses of a green so dark it appeared mundane Calishite black. The halo of greenish black, studded with fiery stars, surrounded his face which was comprised of youthful softness and elven sharpness. Beyond the dark nimbus of hair was an aureole of glittering crimson that was turning black around the edges. It was a scene of beautiful carnage.

Shadash lay in a pool of blood.

The white of his linen pants and matching sarong shone sharply against his dark skin and soaked up spilled life with an eagerness unbecoming the innocent garment. His emerald and ruby eyes stared up at the mirrored chandelier over his head while the blood soaked into his hair, into his skin, into his sense of self. He was mesmerized by a thousand tiny crystal facets of himself tumbled on his back in a field of red. In Shadash's listless imaginings, he likened what he saw unto a womb that had exploded outside the body.

The blood was not his.

Joining him within the growing pool of spilled life was a young man with twenty-six years behind him and none ahead of him. His body was clothed in fine dark blue linens and embroidered silk gauze that grew purple and heavy with blood. The young man was pale, handsome; his dark gold hair cemented to the floor thanks to the release of life from the large open wound spanning from underneath his left ear to the right.

Blood had erupted from the young man's white throat.

Time was meaningless, yet Shadash knew that sooner or later the ebony door with ivory inlays wound be pulled open and he would be found locked to the floor by the blood of the chamberlain's grandson. It would be a fatal discovery and yet could not move. How could something as typical as blood entrap him? He had lain in blood innumerable times before; the followers of Loviatar knew much of that. He had soaked in his own blood and that of others. There was only one quality of this blood was different from all the others.

The blood on the floor was spilled by his hand.

Shadash had not meant for it to happen. The young wizard had bought him for the day; an exotic youth to play the role of his servant, to carry packages, to sing to him, to mewl in feigned pleasure as he raked manicured nails down the fascinating blemish on the boy's back. But then, after the young man had bent the dancer over his writing desk in order to satiate his more carnal pleasures, one of a darker nature had surfaced. As the entertainer straightened his clothes, strong white hands had closed around a dark throat.

The boy did not think, nor did he panic; he knew only that his throat was being constricted and breath would not come. All he could see through a growing haze of red was a jewel-encrusted ritual knife that had no business on the Turmish writing desk. He did not question the presence of the implement. Instinctually, he felt the muscles in his arm slide together, felt the warm metal against his skin, felt tendons tighten and conform to metal and precious stones. Then he was twisting harshly within the cruel hands, blade in the lead.

Blood had sprayed across the room and stippled Shadash in the life of his first kill.

When the young mage finished his struggles and lay limp within the growing field of blood, adrenaline fled Shadash's body in parody of the life fleeing his victim. The dagger tumbled from his fingers and clattered brightly on the floor; the young boy soon followed, knees hitting first and followed by the rest of his body. His lips moved, but only he knew what he was saying.

"_Let it be my blood. I am dead. Sky above, this pain, this is the despair of killing yourself with another's death. This is yarosh_."

The blood was not the first he'd shed in his scant fifteen years, but it was the first lifeblood he had released into the world. He would later learn it was not be the last.

* * *

Next scene: _no friends_. 


	5. no friends

A/N: Again, these scenes are not in chronological order.

* * *

_no friends_

Perfect spheres of salty water exploded; tiny disturbances on the dusty street and a waste on inhospitable terrain. Shadash stared at the dark traces of moisture that had fallen near his dust-clad feet. Mismatched eyes backtracked the path the drops had taken through the air. His maddening gaze slowly lifted up to the young woman he had agreed to meet. Under a layer of powder, her pale face was splotched with red patches; no amount of kohl could hide the red rims of her eyes, but her sweet, full lips continued to smile. Strangled emotions led the dark-skinned entertainer to draw a parallel between her tear-muddied facial powder and the tear-stained dirt next to his feet.

"I don't like it here," the boy said irritably, feigning absolute obliviousness to the wet tracks shining on her cheeks. "And it is much too early to be out."

'Too early' was not long after sunrise; time for most entertainers to finally rest their heads. 'Here' was the deplorable contrivance known as Avenue Paradise, an avenue Shadash had known since childhood when he was one of its wares to be pandered. It was populated with other unfortunates now. Only a few of the older prostitutes knew him and sneered at his passing: they knew the spiteful hatred that burned within the higher class entertainer for those he considered beneath him.

"Do you want to hear what I have to say or not?" the girl laughed, gold curls bouncing beneath the blue gauze shawl she wore over her head and wrapped around her body. Shadash noted the character of her laughter was happy, rather than nervous or forced. She pointed triumphantly at an elaborate jewel piercing her nose. "I've a husband."

The gold jewelry was the other detail Shadash had studiously ignored the moment he found her. "Even I could borrow the house mother's jewelry and pretend to be married, Aisha. The sky knows I've had stranger requests. Do you know what it costs me to meet you? To waste my precious street time like this; it's shameful."

"As if you know shame." She scoffed. The boy took a threatening backward step, but the girl continued smoothly before he turned away. "Why haven't you asked who would marry me?"

Exasperated, Shadash shrugged his elegant shoulders; a motion that caused his abundant jewelry to chime. No matter how degrading his life, he never lost his composure for long. "You must be proud if you want me to ask a question like that. I shall guess... hmm... one of the Caliph's many sons."

The sarcasm was ugly in the morning's golden light, but Aisha was as proficient as he at ignoring things that displeased her. "Shouldn't you at least be happy for me? We've suffered together and we've conspired together, but mostly we've learned that Hell is a better place than Calimport. My husband is taking me away from here."

It was only because she did not try to convince him of the truth of her words that Shadash began to believe her. Such a thing, if it was true, did not bring him happiness; it only inspired a fouler mood. "Then go. I hope he takes your pestering, too."

This time he twisted on the ball of his foot, leaving a hard impression in the dirt covering the old stone avenue. The energy of his swing, indication of his unreasonable anger and uncommon grace, swept his red sarong out wide. The tiny gold bells and glass baubles decorating the hem of the garment rang sharply in protest.

"Why aren't you happy for me? We both wanted to escape this place!" Aisha scolded him bitterly from behind. "We helped one another! I can still help you! If you remain a whore it is your own fault!"

Her words angry wasps which blindly assaulted his ears. For a moment he could feel himself verging on dangerous territory. He could feel the near break of tension within his heart that heralded violence. Rather than give in to the bubbling desire for primal action, he spun back, eyes closed tightly against the force of his coming outburst.

When his voice came, it was loud. Much louder than he had ever cried at the hands of pain or injustice, louder than he had ever sung. It came as a shock, but not a surprise, that his raging was purely incomprehensible but to him.

"_You're still a whore! Nobody cares if you live or die! That husband of yours is going to keep you a slave to his charity! You deserve everything you get for being so stupid! I always hated you and your grey eyes! I don't have enough kindness to wish death on you; I hope you live forever so you can fully appreciate every one of your flaws and **all** your stupidity!_"

Reaching up to his jewel-studded ears, he ripped forth a matching set of heavy pearl drops, and threw them at the girl's feet. In Calishite he stormed, "Your wedding gift!"

She stared in fading shock at his enraged tantrum. Avenue Paradise had grown quiet with the free show, many a dazed drunk and tired whore watched with interest; one never knew how things of this nature panned out or how valuable the scene might prove. There could be a fight amongst the bottom dwellers over the expensive jewelry thrown in the dirt if neither entertainer picked them up.

Nothing short of physical force could have kept Shadash there a moment longer. Angry and confused, he turned away again and began to run back toward Dancer's Gate. In his rush to leave the Avenue, he dashed past the thief that acted as chaperone for the teahouse. The hard-eyed woman was unconcerned, but followed at a safe distance. She would wait to see if the incident would be important to her superiors.

* * *

Next scene: _the best medicine_. 


	6. the best medicine

A/N: This scene can be blamed on one Hannah Min, who used me as a guinea pig for her evil Korean foot book. I'm not entirely sure it wasn't a torture manual, but I don't imagine torture manuals to be light blue or have drawings of happy-looking people. Also to blame was a bad mix of bubble-gum pop music.

* * *

_the best medicine_

"Lolah Lolah lay--!"

The physician, Lolah, was frustrated with the check up. In fact, she was verging on shrieking for one of the toughs the teahouse employed to protect and enslave the entertainers it thrived on. The young man, famous throughout Dancer's Gate for his exotic beauty and grace, had happily made off with their drunken bard's guitar and was serenading her instead of allowing her to grasp his slender feet.

"Lolah Lolah lay--!"

If one could call his repeated cries of her name a serenade. His fingernails were plucking at the instrument's strings in time as his finger pads pressed them down. The 'song' was extremely up-tempo, lively, and playfully moronic.

The proverbial stick in the mud, Lolah was anything but impressed by his performance. She was more inclined to gag him than cover her ears. It didn't help that the few words other than her name were in a language she could not understand. It sounded like he was singing gibberish, except she could detect some structure and repeated particles of some sort. She was certain the laughing face and twinkling red and green eyes meant the popular entertainer was laughing at her.

"Shadash," she growled, planting weathered hands on her hips, "don't think I won't call for help."

In response, he jumped to his feet amongst the pillows and flashed a smile that was a slash of white in his chocolate face. "Lolah Lolah lay--!" Guitar singing a more complex tune than his lips, he began to dance in complicated rounds, his feet a blur of intricate footwork and his hips churning like a spoon in tea.

"Nasoos!" Lolah shouted the name of the beefy guard that had been flirting with her for two years. Shadash didn't pause despite her call for assistance. In response, he jumped off the barred window seat and backed up to her, pressing his shoulders to her back as he continued to sing.

Lolah rolled her eyes at his antics, wondering if perhaps the youth had gotten extremely high in the hopes she would not discern some illness. It didn't seem likely a patron had hurt the boy or passed him a disease; the men and women that used the entertainers were charged exorbitantly for medical treatments and healing potions. It wasn't likely he picked up a sickness from seeing somebody on the side, either; Shadash wasn't the type to give away something for nothing.

Fortunately Nasoos came in to rescue her from the bundle of energy dancing and singing ("Lolah Lolah lay--!") with her, though she remained stock still, rooted to the floor. She was determined to be more immovable object than Shadash could be irresistible force.

The boy ducked Nasoos' initial attempt to snag him, by keeping Lolah between them. He continued to dance and play his borrowed guitar, but he was soon laughing too hard to sing. Instead, he simply shouted 'Lolah Lolah lay!' to the beat he was playing out on the instrument; now and again using the sound box as an effective drum.

Sighing, Lolah finally did the smart thing: she ducked low. Nasoos' hands shot out over the woman's shoulders, one grabbing the boy's neck, the other seizing the seat of his white pants. Rather than give up completely, Shadash continued to laugh, but held the guitar at the ready, to save it from damage as he was hoisted into the air.

Firmly, without gentleness, Nasoos dropped the boy onto the window seat and pressed his dark face into the pillows to muffle the positively insane laughter. Lolah noted how the boy made sure to nestle the guitar among the pillows safely above his head. And then she seized one of his smooth feet.

At one time, Lolah could have said a simple prayer to learn the dancer's condition, anymore she resorted to mundane means learned wherever she could. Her preferred method with humanoids was a surprisingly effective, but obscure, art that revealed the condition of the entire body through corresponding points on the feet.

"Is he getting high lately?" She inquired, firmly examining the boy's tough sole with equally tough fingertips. "I've never seen him quite so... stupid."

Nasoos shrugged his massive shoulders. "He is like this after a private party and before the party he is smoking enough hashish or opium to drop a camel."

"Ah," the physician murmured, suddenly understanding the situation. "How many at the party?"

The guard shook his head. "I wasn't there."

"I wasn't either!" Shrieked a laughing Shadash. "But my body was, and he says if it is men, it doesn't matter how many there are, just how many times they can get it up! What a crude body he is!"

The physician released the boy's foot. "Shadash, I need you to calm down so you can tell me what hurts when I press on your feet and what feels nice. Will you do that?"

Abruptly the laughing and squirming ceased. The sudden hush as noise abruptly fled the room was startlingly uncomfortable. "I thought laughter was the best medicine," the boy whispered, but this time there was no joy, no laughter, just the honest cracking of a whore's voice when he's too tired to hide the misery.

The woman was too inured to suffering to feel much sympathy at the boy's tone, but in combination with the words, she felt her heart constrict slightly. "It helps," she replied steadily, "but medicine helps more. Do I need to keep Nasoos in here or are you calm now?"

An emerald eye peaked out from the velvet and silk cushions, while a brilliant chuckle was a precursor to a smart remark. "I'm calm, but Nasoos can stay. He likes you. He has me recite poetry before you visit."

Nasoos shoved the boy's face down into the pillows once more, perhaps thinking to smother him to death and use the corpse to cover his embarrassment. "Death cures everything, boy."

A sigh blew Lolah's black bangs from her eyes as she dug skilled fingertips mercilessly into what she knew where sensitive areas on anyone's feet. "Shadash, what Nasoos likes is always obvious and right now, I think he likes popping boys' vertebrae into their own mouths."

Shadash's muffled shrieks of laughter were punctuated with childish whines of agony and accusations that she was being needlessly cruel. He was right: in this way both Nasoos and Lolah finally found the first hint of sadistic appeal in the entertainer's dramatics.

* * *

Next scene: _jewel in coffee grounds_. 


	7. jewel in coffee grounds

A/N: Apologies for slacking off. This scene and the one that follow are why I rated this fic 'M'. Though, I really don't think the rating system makes any sense.

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_jewels in coffee grounds_

Treasure could be found in the heaps of refuse outside raucous playhouses and rundown temples. Dark brown fingers grew alternately light gray and dark again as shaking hands rifled through trash overlaid with incense ash and coffee grounds. Both were fragrant and drew his lingering attention. He paused, knees digging into the garbage in his low crouch. For a moment he let the conflicting scents of sandal wood, cardamom, and bitter coffee fill his dulled senses. It took the edge off his scent which was a malaise of sickening scents that were covered with cheap perfume rather than washed away.

Hanging like a wooden shawl across his neck, a cracked and limp marionette languished. Though rats had chewed off the leather ears and brush mane, Shadash could tell it was a horse. There was nothing more than a stump where the tail had been and the eyes had flaked off long before it had been thrown away. The strings were all but gone, but the joints were comprised of rusted wire and yet held. Even without all four hooves, it was a treasure.

A gray hand smoothed fragrant ash over the wooden body and a brown hand resumed its industry. The hoof was not to be found, but he held out for other treasures in the damp heap as he sucked the flavor out of a mouthful of grounds. If he found something to distract from his treasure, it would be easier to hide it from the other feral children kept in Avenue Paradise's dark and repulsive alleys.

There was naught to be had. Shadash swallowed his mouthful of grounds and scooped up another he had yet to suck on. It was an old habit and it was turning his small teeth yellow. His face was as dark as the coffee he'd never had the pleasure to drink and so, in the darkness where he was kept to be preyed on, no one noticed. He didn't care, but he'd been told he would be lashed to an inch of his life if he continued the habit when new teeth came in. Shadash cared very much about avoiding lashes.

Still crouching in the dirt, the boy thought hard. How could he keep the horse? He was a vicious scrapper, but physically he was incapable of holding his own in a fight with a larger opponent. Many of the other children were larger, a few would regularly called his bluff, those that wouldn't make a grab for the horse would simply wait until he was picked up for a night by one of the dreaded representatives of Loviathar. If he died, it wouldn't matter. If he survived, he would be too weak to defend his right of possession.

If his exotic green-black hair had not recently been deloused, cut, and sold to doll makers, he could hide the horse under the mass. He stood up, knees shaking, and observed the decaying headscarf tied around his hips. There was barely enough material to cover his loins. He supposed he could walk into the shelter naked; the scarf was a new acquisition he'd stolen from one of the sick in his stable. Everyone was used to seeing him naked.

Nodding slowly, the boy undid the knot in the stained scarf and pulled it from his body. He laid it down on the ground and wrapped the horse inside. Speaking in soothing tones to the horse, Shadash assured it that he would be able to keep it from harm. He did not pause to wonder if the horse understood the singular language of Shadashite; he assumed it would.

After he had tucked the dirty parcel under his arm, the boy walked on bare feet, clad only in dirt and festering scabs. He was not allowed far from the mud-brick walls and leaking roof of the house. None of the children ever ventured further than a few lanes from their shelter. Everyone knew that inhabitants that did so never came back. They were told repeatedly that leaving would end in death and dismemberment and it was easy to believe in that sad back alley where the children grew as feral as dogs. As terrible as their young lives were, most of them wanted to survive. Those that didn't were usually sent to the Loviatarans with doomed, damned, ever-surviving Shadash.

Before Shadash slipped into the gaping maw of the derelict house, he stopped outside and swallowed his last mouthful coffee grounds. Placing the hand covered with ash over his mouth and nose, he stepped out of the blinding midday sun, into the unlit darkness of the mud-brick structure. He inhaled hard on the ashes covering his hand, hoping to cover the scent of stale sweat and other rank bodily fluids. His effort was disastrous; a wracking sneeze threw him to his knees.

Murmurs of protest sounded from all sides. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the dimness, but when they did, he saw several sets of narrowed eyes observing him from the vicinity of the packed dirt floor. Luckily, Shadash saw no interest from the older children that lazed on the ground near the door. Their eyes were the most dead, their cruelty the most casual, their bodies the most consumed with disease.

Shadash moved on, ignoring a few soft-spoken jabs concerning his lack of scarf. "Ugly-Eyes, put your funeral shroud back on." "The girl you took it from was fed to dogs." "Loviatar's man was here looking for you." "Unroll that thing, your ass is a gaping hole customers shouldn't see."

He passed through another corridor and went up rickety wooden stairs that were hammered straight into the wall when the pathetic structure was first built. Only the smallest, lightest, of the children could make it up the stairs. It did not keep them safe; there was no other way down. It was common knowledge that the place was haunted: Shadash and the other young ones only went there for solitude during daylight hours.

It was not empty when he arrived, but he was certain he could bluff and outfight any of the children there. He could do it even though he developed the shakes the day before. Casting his malevolent green and red stare around the flat, he communicated his dominance and superiority. His odd appearance, dark-skinned as a Chultan prince, eyes a conflict of colors, hair the midnight green of sea kelp, and slightly tapered ears, was enough to concern the bravest of the children.

Nobody moved to bother Shadash as he set down his wrapped treasure and carefully stepped over dirty bodies to reach a pile of broken pottery and metal bits. The heap belonged to nobody in particular, but was grown by the inquisitive hands of the young. They were like magpies; picking up shining pieces of glass, broken marbles, bits of interesting debris, and, most importantly, wire and string. The boy's fingers snagged what he needed and callused feet returned him to his horse.

Ingenious small hands worked with wire, strung strings, whittled wood with glass, and bored small holes. As he worked, he sang in his native tongue to put the earless horse at ease. The other children understood nothing, but they enjoyed Shadash's singing and did not complain.

By afternoon, the horse was restrung in a more complicated fashion than it had sported originally. Shadash knew the horse had been strung onto several sticks, but he only had three long splinters he'd pulled up from the floor and decrepit window pane. It had a new hoof that was smaller than the other four, two new orange ears, ripped from the hem of his scarf and a matching orange tail of the same origin. It still had no eyes, but Shadash knew it didn't need eyes to see.

While he restrung and rewired the marionette, the boy had hit on a stratagem to insure possession of the horse. He decided it would perform plays, just like in the playhouse or temple that had thrown the horse away. As long as he convinced everyone that he was the horse's only voice, he would be the only one who could touch it.

Satisfied with this plan, Shadash wrapped his arms around the horse, careful not to tangle his strings and pushed his back against a wall where the rotting boards did not protest nor mud flake. Muscles still spasming, he drifted to the floor to sleep and dream of a horse that would take him far away to Chult, where he thought his father was from. After all, the Loviatarans had told him his mother was a dead-eyed half-elf whore with a resilience their goddess adored. Surely his father was noble; not the demon his owners sneered about. Yes, a chocolate-skinned noble from Chult who rode a magnificent horse with orange ears and an orange tail.

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Next scene: _dog eat dog_


	8. dog eat dog

A/N: A defining moment in a little over 900 words . Loviatar ritual idea was Witchwolf's, not mine. ...And why can't I insert a line below this? (sigh) Ah, ff dot net, you are nothing if not the sum of your faults. Anyway, next scene is either _the gold standard_ or _to be left_, depending on whether I go with chronological order or order in which scenes were typed. Any preferences?

_dog eat dog_

His skin was dark as rich soil and the pitch fringe of lashes around his eyes made kohl unnecessary: his eyes were hemmed in with thick, black lines, anyway. It was deemed a necessary expenditure when hunger had begun to suck in at his stomach, cheeks and eyes. With his short spikes of lice-ridden hair, marimba ribs, and shaking fingers, he was picked out less by even the customers with the thinnest of coins. The boy was glad for the respite from the depravity he had always known.

Shadash understood what it meant when his wounds refused mending. He knew what it meant when his skeletal body ceased to turn a few coppers: he would have to fight for muddy water though it smelled as if it had passed through a donkey's body. New contentions for scraps with much smaller competitors: rats.

A tenday after he had introduced his wooden horse to the other children and Shadash was still stunned by anger. For days, all he saw was the swarm of grabbing hands as the horse was ravaged by desire, quarter drawn in acquisitive frenzy. The shakes had intensified as he struggled with an internal foe he could not comprehend. When the internal struggle finally erupted, it translated itself to his limbs in a frenzy of his own.

In the burning midday heat, when nothing of any intelligence moved about the city streets, Shadash had pierced the thick stillness with a feral scream, seized what was left of the horse's wooden body and began to lay waste to every living creature in his vicinity.

Children fled the house like rats before a flood. On the squalid back alleys of Avenue Paradise, a wave of screaming, crying children broke forth. It only took one adult to rip the makeshift club from the boy's clawing grip. It took a second to lift the twig-like boy off the ground by the back of his neck. The horse's body hit Shadash repeatedly and the man yelled in his face, but it was nothing more than gibberish and pathetic pain versus the loss of the dreams invested in the wooden marionette.

The beating was enough to steal the boy's conciousness. When he awoke he found nothing but enemies within the shelter. The other children stole his food, tore apart his orange scarf, pissed in his water. He'd seen this before and the result was always the same: starvation, dehydration, disappearance, all paths that led to death.

His body was too weak to succumb to shakes, though his fingers still trembled, but Shadash decided that would change. He had never given up, his small chest never lost the flame of utter defiance; it only burned brighter. Salvation came in the routine observance of death.

Shadash often ate bugs; most children did. In his hunger, he ceased to be disgusted by the writhing pale bodies of maggots; they didn't move fast enough. Beetles were not his favorite, because the shells stuck in his teeth and slid beneath his gums. Moths were fine as long as the wings were removed; it did not benefit anyone to have a dusty mouth.

It was when he found the larger piece of carrion that he knew his fortune was changing. There were the flies, the crows, and the dogs, but Shadash was patient. He went back to the shelter and, shutting out the residents' whispered threats, Shadash made off with a makeshift torch, lit off one the place's tea lantern.

The remainder of the horse's body made a fragrant torch. While the scavengers were not afraid of the rickety boy, they did fear the smell of smoke, the burn of fire. Shadash chased off the beasts, ignored the flies, and made an attempt to cook his meat. He did not care how much he burnt it, just worked to make it soft so his teeth, increasingly loose in his mouth, would not have to work as hard.

It didn't take much to fill his shrunken stomach, but he knew that to leave his windfall was to lose it. It was far too large to hide or save; he resolved to work diligently with torch and shards of glass and pottery until he removed a great chunk of the flesh. He then burned it nearly black, in hopes it would last longer.

He smiled at his handiwork, his yellowed teeth bright through char and grease. Reverently, he put out his torch, his fiery horse, and hid it in the debris before shuffling back to the reeking house.

That night a cleric of Loviatar came for the boy and several more of the cheapest prostitutes in Calimport. It was a seasonal practice to augment one of their feared communal rituals with a press of hired skin that none would miss. One of the healthier children ran up to the haunted second level to find the local temple's favorite child…

...and raced down screaming.

Shadash, hair wild over his head, green eye and red eye shining with a crazed light, appeared at the top of the stairs. His stance was confident, his feet spread wide, sticky grease adhered gloves of black ash up to his elbows in living parody of the half-devoured hand gripped in his teeth.

"Horror...!" said the proprietor.

"Magnificent...!" said the cleric, placing bright coins of gold in the horrified man's hand.

And he was both. If only animals could survive the gutters of Calimport, an animal he would be.

"If you possess anything, child," Loviatar's man said, "bring it with you."


	9. the gold standard

A/N: I'd like to dedicate one of these chapters to Naguib Mahfouz, but I doubt he would like that very much. Instead, as a nod to him I _won't_ dedicate a chapter to him. Honor _in absentia_, in a bastardized way.

This particular scene received a truly massive overhaul; went from less than nine hundred to over 1,300.

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_the gold standard_

Everyone that heard knew it was a mistake when a certain widow told Shadash he was worth his weight in gold. To consider was the boy's jaded fascination with compliments that aped sincerity, no matter how fraudulent. Pretty phrases and flowery speech boosted an ego that was not unlike a bottomless pit. Complimentary language was ambrosia to the dancer, especially when he was so used to concocting it to please others.

Making his patrons feel good was his job and not a reciprocal obligation of those he served. His favorite patrons pretended to love him and he threw his all into their lies; it was precious fantasy fulfillment. If they were well-respected and mentioned buying off his debt, he would let that pass without too much masked contempt. Was not Aisha bought out of debt? On occasion, it was even an enjoyable pretend. Why not be bought by a jaded old woman with such high standing in Calimport? He was young, beautiful, and he easily learned what his patrons desired. It was this sensitivity to others' desires combined with hard work and perseverance that brought him off Avenue Paradise. It was the very thing he believed would work him into higher heights. Why not a plush residency as a wealthy woman's personal entertainer?

When Shadash convinced the rich, and much older, woman to show him how much gold equaled his weight, an extra bounce appeared in his step as he leapt inside her silk upholstered palanquin. Unrepentant bastard that he was, he made sure to expend his exuberance by dancing in place inside the hand-carried transport. Making life difficult for her servants amused Shadash greatly and brought laughter to his patron's thin lips.

The treasury was deep beneath the ground level of her large compound. Without regard for decorum of any kind, she took him to her late husband's treasury and bade him sit on one of two metal plates held by an ornate scale. He did as she commanded, sparing few looks at the carefully organized chests and cases all about him: it was neither the first treasury he had been in nor the most fantastic. His eyes were much more interested in the scale's mechanisms.

Rather than sit still, for such was usually impossible unless he'd had a lion's share of hashish, he struck a score of impressive and scandalous poses while her servants set small gold bars on the opposite scale. To his dismay, it didn't take long to gather enough gold from the chests to lift the wiry young dancer from the floor. In less than thirteen poses, a small mound of gold lifted his plate from the floor.

"Surely I am worth more than this, precious lady," he exclaimed with as much shocked hurt as he could manage. "This isn't even a pittance of your vast holdings, but it is still only equal to half my debt."

Laughing at his precociousness, she agreed. "Yes, this is the least amount of my wealth but I still love it more than you." As she suspected, his eyes did not widen in shocked pain when she spoke the cruel truth. She was just as experienced with playing her servants as he was at playing his patrons. "Gold lasts far longer than youth, beauty, or good company. At least you own a debt, little one. Some people cannot even claim that."

In response, he threw himself into a delightfully thorough tantrum there on the scale. He wailed, he sobbed, he even managed a few tears, and loud and clear in his sorrowful cries was the phrase _paga fyir_. It was not the strongest form of 'stupid bitch' in Shadashite, but it was enough to satisfy the boy's annoyance with a break in his fantasy.

The emotional outburst was authentic enough that the widow believed his heart was truly in his performance. It only made her smile grow. She did not notice his mismatched eyes often straying toward the scale. More interesting to Shadash than the gold he couldn't have or her counterfeit affections, was the ornate mechanism.

More interesting to the widow was the dancer's illusion of pain. It excited her desires as surely as the feel of power. Gesturing languidly to one of her servants, Shadash was seized and carried to out of the treasury. In the privacy of her bedroom, she had her servant strip aside the dancer's filmy silks and search him from head to toe for stolen wealth. Conscious of her demeanor, Shadash screamed protests from start to finish. When he was found innocent of thievery, she swooped in to console him with kisses. It was all part of the elaborate games she liked to play. He never particularly enjoyed sex with either gender, but the sheer complication females made of it lead him to prefer male patrons.

He was returned to Dancer's Gate in the early hours of the morning, as the widow did not trust Shadash to keep his hands off her jewelry while she slept. Quiet with consuming thoughts about the scale and a burning horse, the young dancer swept into the teahouse. His layers of beige and salmon pink gauze flowed around his legs as if he were walking through surf.

Sensing his return, the song birds in the elaborate cage along one wall began to rustle and trill in greeting. He scowled at their cage's velvet coverlet which lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. Whistling to them in near-perfect mimicry, he pulled the cover over the wire cage and returned them to night.

When one of the domesticated desert cats wandered over to rub his legs, Shadash scolded her soundly for pulling down the cover. But he could not hold his anger in the face of such unjudging eyes and crouched down to pet and rub her until she bumped her face against his.

The raven, Corsh, and the fennec, Palu, both greeted him in their own ways, but soon left him when they sensed his distraction. Shadash walked around the teahouse's sizeable floor space, studying the chandeliers, potted plants, and everything else that was raised and lowered between floor and ceiling. He recalled again the kinship between his horse and the scale. And in his mind ideas bloomed anew.

The supply room was locked, but locks meant little to a boy sly enough to make an impression of the appropriate key in wax. He used the copy he'd had made to unlock, open, and rifle through the contents. The sheer excess of rope and chains within the room only served to amuse him. All the things he needed could not be found, so replacement pieces had to be contrived; in their absence Shadash's mental designs became more complex.

The managers, dancers and apprentices were puzzled when they awoke to find the massive bird cage suspended near the ceiling by means of a monstrously complicated and ugly pulley system made of ropes and wooden spools. It would have been more a matter of amusement among the managers had they not found the supply of rope and chain heaped on the floor in the supply closet.

It would have been less of an eyesore if it were made of something less awkward looking than spools of varying size or if it were anchored with fewer ropes and chains. Tripping over the ropes or banging one's head against the bottom of the cage presented other annoyances. It was not lost on the household which of their dancers was obsessed with caring for the birds to the point he could recite their elaborate family trees, short enough to easily walk under the cage without hitting his head, and sneaky enough to pull the project off.

Sleeping snugly in his bunk, curled up in a ball of flesh and bone beside the fennec and with two of the house cats in his hair, Shadash slept soundly in the knowledge that he was brilliant, annoying, and worth more than his weight in gold.


	10. good side, bad side

_(A/N: Title is possibly a triple entendre. Still don't like OpenOffice. Still can't complain about the price. Pathetic attempt at lyrics influenced by Rachid Taha's '_Safi'_ off the _Tekitoi? _album.)  
_

* * *

_**good side/bad side**_

It was an orange afternoon in the Bazaar thanks to the haze from a rare pass of rain clouds. The top layer of dust along the streets had turned to fine mud in the short downpour and had since been walked off by the many merchants and customers who thronged the avenues. Shadash was satisfied with the dry layer beneath, for he preferred to walk barefoot and his toes were habitually adorned with gold and silver rings. Far better for the mud to be caked to foreign sandals than between his toes.

Shadowing him was one of the daytime chaperones from his teahouse; a deceptive woman from the thieves guild. She was an excellent hand at making herself undetectable amongst the crowd. Her lack of presence freed people to speak openly with the young dancer, who was something of a celebrity in the locale. She made Shadash feel caged and safe; it was another manifestation of his usual conflict between insecurity and defiance.

His owners need not have bothered sending her; the adolescent entertainer feared freedom just as much as he desired it. The streets of Calimport scared him more than tales of djinn. He had seen and experienced the evil that ran along the alleys and thoroughfares with its bloody tongue lolling. The tales of djinn in the deserts he sang and danced to were only words to him. He feared the Anauroch or Calimshan desert less than Calimport itself.

The din of the busy marketplace was nearly enough to muffle the heavy population of bells on the ornamented bangles looped loosely around Shadash's youthful ankles. The ringing was still enough of an announcement of his presence to send the closer merchants into bevies of greetings and offers. It was also a signal to the local street prostitutes to make gestures to ward off the evil eye. For it was well known that Shadash hated their kind and his bicolored glare was considered highly potent.

A few steps behind Shadash walked a tired little girl of no more than twelve years. He had borrowed the apprentice from Chidi on the basis of her looks and costume. Where Shadash's skin was predominantly the color of rich dark coffee, the girl's skin was elven pale. Where his hair was the darkest of kelp greens, hers was a merry strawberry blonde. His ample jewelry was comprised mainly of deep red stones, while hers were pretty green glass. His linen pants and flowing silk sarong were white, hemmed in red and trimmed with gold disks, red silk tassels, and gold bells; she wore sky blue from head to toe. As far as Shadash was concerned, she was little more than a living accessory.

In her arms the young apprentice carried Shadash's purchases and gifts. There were flowers, zils, paper bags of snacks (which he never shared), bags of bird seed, and strings for sitar, guitar, and oud. The girl was sure she could not hold another item and hoped Shadash would soon return to the teahouse. Her only consolation was that he was now heeding the siren call of jewels and those he would not trust her to hold.

A flurry of greetings and salutations rose among the jewel merchants to satisfy Shadash's tapered ears. Right away, the men and women began to rearrange their garnets, rubies, corals, and carnelians to catch the sun's orange rays. They were well-versed in how best to display their wares and what would catch the dancer's jaded eyes.

It was a superstition among them that Shadash's strange red eye was the product of a trade with a djinn. Local fable held that it was important to approach him from the side that held the eye of sparkling green. Therefore, Shadash's good side and his bad side were thought to be quite literal.

His eyes, shining wet jewels in their own right, swept over the glowing offerings. His heart raced with the glittering gems and he wished that he were a god, to be offered all things for the simple price of his favor. Soaring on the wheedling and dulcet tones of the merchants, the few people in his life who truly understood one of his desires, he broke into charming laughter.

Whirling on his helper in a swirl of white silk, jangling gold bells, and gem stones, Shadash thrust his hands into her fast-held parcels. When they came out again, the zils were slipped over his fingers and he was spinning away.

"Play for me!" He howled, grinning like the djinns of legend. "Olu! Get your zurna, you old liar!"

It was spontaneous but not totally unexpected for bards or entertainers of Shadash's kind to perform there on the streets. Usually it was not as spontaneous a moment as it seemed; such events were secretly planned and paid for in advance. Not so with Shadash; he did as he liked as often as he could and dancing, singing, and making music freed him like no other thing in life. It was his golden key to paradise and it drew looters and thieves by the droves.

Performers were good for business and the merchants rewarded the boy with presents and discounts. The problems would come later when he returned to the teahouse and the owners and managers learned they would not receive a cut for the performance.

Without waiting a moment for accompaniment, Shadash struck an unassuming pose. Dark head bowed, fiery gems shone from the dark mass of hair that covered his eyes. One leg was bent, ankle extended, toes pointing down, and his arms stretched out to one side. Around him, the crowd moved back to allow him room. Eager faces pressed forward to see the free performance. In the distance, people were calling to their friends to come see.

First his fingers flashed, ringing the zils in a simple rhythm. The next sign of life came the moment the sound of drums began to rise through the assembled crowd, though there was no drummer in sight. With the zils and phantom drums speaking percussive secrets, Shadash began rolling his finely toned arms like snakes through water. The motion from his arms seemed to roll down his body in a wave, setting his bare torso, stomach, and hips into consecutive movement.

His dance was graceful and provocative and while it started out with a slow sinuous character, the music tempo and his speed picked up dramatically the moment he began to move his feet. The gold and red bangles on his ankles filled out the percussion with a new layer of rhythm. To the side, the little apprentice watched and listened in awe; she knew no other dancer in the teahouse could produce three interweaving rhythms and dance amongst them at the same time.

Olu, a merchant that charged a small fee to repair Shadash's many ornaments, finally produced the strange-looking zurna. The man was no virtuoso, but he knew enough to work with the entertainer's beats and he could time his breathing beautifully. The dancer was so accomplished with music that he knew very well how to manipulate his music to make Olu's zurna sound natural, even skilled beyond his ability.

Shadash threw his body into swift convulsions, dancing fast, whirling in tight circles, taking a wide path along the circumference of rapt faces. From there he wrapped himself into ever tighter circles, spiraling into the center with frantic passion. He drove himself to a dizzying edge, bending his torso back in his spinning, so both his heavy veil of hair and filmy white sarong were flying out around him like stiff collars. His many tassels, all red and gold, on ankles, hips, and biceps, whipped around in a drunkenly exuberant march. He danced so hard that his bare feet left gouges in the thick layer of dust on the road. His heels inscribed the ground with the notes his zils, drums, and bells were throwing into the air.

All around him the people watched, their heartbeats speeding along with the percussion and his movements. Children stared in awe, forgetting to mimic his movements like they did when they saw other dancers. Many of the men and women felt every pulse of his hips as they swiveled, hip bones pummeling the air with rabid force. The more virtuous were hypnotized by his passion, the less so felt their mouths go dry with well-known desire.

The inner beat, the throbbing of a terminally wounded heart, was loud in Shadash's head. He began the dance as an expression of happiness, but as ever, when it came to listening to the most potent of all rhythms, he began to feel energy surface from within the painful and powerful shell. Something began to bubble forth, something primal, something that tickled along his veins, through his diaphragm, up his throat, tickling his nose, until he felt it flow across his skin in waves of warm and cold energy.

It was both terrifying and beautiful, like the crest of a powerful sneeze or unexpected orgasm. He began to exult in his sudden lack of control. He moved, he flowed, he poured himself into the beat of his heart and worshiped and languished at the altar of unlikely dreams. Soon sweat was flying off his limbs and soaking into his hair and sound was pouring out of his throat, shaped instinctually into words none understood.

"_As for me  
my heart soars free  
As for me  
my heart can see_

"_As for me  
my heart won't bleed  
As for me  
no casualty."_

Words he forgot even as they dissipated on the air amidst a last spin that took him down into a crouch that shrouded him in a small dust cloud. The cessation of his driving beat faded from the air into silence. His hair and silk sarong echoed the fading music by swirling around him to a soft stop, settling around his shoulders or legs.

When the panting, weakened dancer finally peered through the heavy drapery of dark hair, his bi-colored eyes were greeted with an extraordinary scene. Surrounding him in a near perfect circle, he found a cage of dumbstruck faces. The street around him was quiet, not even the pigeons made noise from the eaves and walls. Fearfully confused, Shadash glanced around, looking guiltily for his daytime chaperone to protect him should he have somehow broken a law. When he finally found her plain face he saw that she, too, was staring vacantly at him.

Slowly, he rose to his full unassuming height and turned to the apprentice he'd brought with him. She stared, without horror, straight forward. The dancer found himself imprisoned by a thick ring of living statues. Was it possible, a tremulous inner voice questioned, that the magic his drunken mentor taught him could evolve without the bard's instruction? Or had his work for Marya been discovered and he was about to die, as he had always feared, on the savage streets?

Hands lifting in fear and horror, Shadash covered the lower half of his face and whispered in Calishite, "Is it me?"

The words brought a reaction from a nearby figure in the crowd. His eyes darted to the movement and his red eye was the first to gather the image the young dancer hoped never to glimpse again.

"You are becoming strong." Two strong, knowing, hands came together in a sharp report.

As one, the crowd jolted from their collective trance and immediately charged forward as if nothing at all had happened. Men pounded Shadash's bare back, strong hands slapped the large blemish that was yet another of his identifying features. A blemish too expensive to remove that earned him the derisive nickname, Leafback, in his teahouse. The pale mark ran down the channel of his spine and spread out across his back along the rivulets between his ribs.

He stumbled forward under the excited enthusiasm. Normally he would smile and ward them off by dodging contact and tartly ridiculing their efforts, but his difficult gaze was captured, enslaved and whimpering, by the stare of the man of Loviatar.

Though he was sorely afraid, Shadash gathered his courage and drank greedily from the praise of the crowd pressing in on him. He took in their interest, their affection, their lust, and he forged it into a semblance of confidence. Walking forward with counterfeit grace, he bowed repeatedly to the admiring crowd and made his way toward his outer demon. He could feel every hand that had ever touched the bleached skin on his back. Especially the hands that had shattered the stillness a moment before.

He held the crowd's admiration inside desperately when he stepped up, just out of reach of the cleric. His voice did not tremble or betray weariness or fear, but the sweat covering his body clothed him in coldness. "I am too strong for you and I'm no longer available. You should leave now before I have you thrown out of this neighborhood. They listen to me here."

The man's face twisted with humor, but his eyes never left the dancer's. No one else had ever held Shadash's gaze, no one else could steal his soul, no one else even believed he had a soul to steal. "The years have been kind to you, child. You look more and more... like your mother."

All the courage he had stolen from the crowd began draining through his fingers like loosely held sand. The cold sweat that had settled on his skin began to radiate frigidness deep into his tissue. "N-not kind," he stuttered. Shadash hadn't stuttered since he was a child.

The cleric nodded, his lips still evidencing his amusement. "You refer to the years or my statement about your mother? You must mean the years; you never knew your mother as I did."

Except the off-kilter beating of his heart, Shadash could not move. He could hardly speak. "I will scream..."

"That would be nostalgic," the man replied with sincere amusement. He stepped forward, easily invading Shadash's personal space. "Nobody aided you then, young and pretty under the dirt as you were, what makes you think they will aid you now that you are older and beautiful?"

"I have s-something they want," Shadash whispered. His stolen confidence was making a route down through his body, bolting him to the ground in the exodus. "I make them happy."

"Ah, as you have made me happy? If I threw you to the ground," the man returned, one warm finger tracing the contour of the entertainer's cheek, "and offered you to the crowd, how much happier would they be? Have you forgotten how many of us love your agony? Do you think yourself too old for that? Too good? Too expensive?"

The man brought his hand up and tucked a lock of hair behind Shadash's slightly pointed ear. A chill ran thundering down the dancer's spine, destroying any confidence of his own and bringing on a wave of self-loathing so strong he could taste bile. "They like me. They give me things and listen to me. They don't hurt me."

The man snorted. "Just because my sisters and I like to torture people for information, don't think I don't have a spell that tells me when you are lying. In their eyes you are nothing more than a pretty flesh golem. They pretend to listen, their gifts are territorial pissings, and they haven't the skill or finesse to hurt you the way you should be hurt. Pretty little Shadash, your screaming will always echo in the temple. Did you know your mother never screamed? Not once. You more than made up for the lack, didn't you?"

He was intoxicated by fear, his skin was prickling and his body began to shiver. What could he say to save himself? What could he say that would not reveal more of his broken shell to the most insidious man that had ever opened his skin? "Mutes don't scream. But it doesn't matter, she was nothing. Nothing to me, not to anyone."

"They say nothing begets nothing, Shadash. Perhaps she was empty, but she was hardly nothing." A distant smile formed in his sharp eyes. Shadash watched in fear as the man brought a memory from the background into the present. "She never fought, not like you. No one has ever fought like you did. You were defiant until you lost consciousness and when you awoke, you used the recovery to spit and hiss. No, you may have your mother's exotic looks, but you have some of your father's spirit."

"Father?" Shocked by a sudden stabbing pain in his heart, flashes of shattered fantasies assaulted the entertainer from every direction. A prince of Chult on a powerful orange-maned stallion, a bard of high renown and riches, a powerful warrior from across the sea; so many childish dreams that he thought he no longer believed in, all these came immediately to mind.

"An appropriate way to address me, yes," the cleric laughed. "You are a bright boy, aren't you!"

At first Shadash could not understand the man's response. The words were disjointed and made no sense. Confusion distracted him from fear and enabled him to take faltering steps away from Loviatar's man. Blindly, he stumbled into the pretty little apprentice he'd brought with him. Looking down he saw her eyes and the mirror of his confusion. She was young, almost as young as he had been when he'd had his last night at the temple of Loviatar. A night like the other not-rare-enough nights he'd learned that death was the easy way out. Nights often dominated by the man before him.

The man's words were processed so slowly, with such painful labor, that it was almost possible to look in the dancer's eyes and see them come together. As the meaning was sorted out, the healthy flush left Shadash's face. New sweat, cold as ice, sprung out over his skin. Both eyes widened and his coveted lips stretched in the vilest of all horrors. The childish fancies that he knew were stupid, unrealistic, dreams exploded within him, pushing all the air out of his body.

Shadash's vision grew dark with the brief convulsion, but he fought the weakness sucking him toward the ground. He fought hard, stumbled further from the man. He reached out limply and tried to push the little girl at the cleric, anything to save himself, to escape the horror of the possibility he had presented.

His flight was not graceful, only panicked and desperate. When he tripped, he scrabbled on hands and feet, tore past staring people of all races and sexes, often using them as leverage to speed his flight. There was no dance or beauty, just wide dilated eyes, clawing hands, and a low moan that embodied a grief so vast it could not be given measure.

Again and again, Shadash stumbled to his knees in the road. People gave him wide berth, fearing the panicked dancer's rolling eyes and jerky movements. When he finally made it around a corner, he was shaking wildly and gasping for air. But no air could replace the fantasies, the stupid, stupid fantasies, of his orange-maned stallion and the men that had ridden on him.

As when he had sung and danced, he could feel some uncontrolled thing deep within him rising to the surface, but this time there was no pleasure in it. All he could feel was nausea and fire. It traveled from his heart, burst through his stomach, and up his throat in a hot rush.

Rather than let forth a flow of hypnotic music, Shadash convulsed and threw up. Right behind the violent expulsion came an ear-shattering screech of inhuman and terrifying proportions. The sound of shattered pieces of a broken heart scraping together like metal on metal.

Those who knew him thought he screamed in his unknown native tongue, but in truth there were no words. Shadash could only scream in incoherent horror, rage, and pain. Far behind, the cleric of Loviatar noted the mass exodus of the people in the boy's vicinity. The boy was definitely stronger, definitely possessed of bardic magic, and definitely a work to make Loviatar proud. The cleric closed his eyes and savored the beautiful sound of the boy's primal agony.

* * *

_Next up:_ afterparty_, wherein Shadash tries to deny assumed and evidenced realities. And doesn't vomit.   
_


	11. after party

Return of the Disclaimer: The recognizable characters in this fanfiction were created by R. A. Salvatore in association with the legal entity Wizards of the Coast, who owns relevant copyrights to additional Forgotten Realms material referred to herein. The characters are used without permission but no material profit of any kind is being made from the following work. WotC reserve rights to Forgotten Realms material, but all of the characters and situations unique to this work of fan fiction are property of the writer.

A/N: If I'm going to continue this, I'm going to agree with crushingsky and just forget chronological order. I appreciate the people who took the time to make a case for chronological order, but it doesn't work; I feel like I'm trying to shuffle the course of a river. I know this will screw people up, but if you like these experimental pieces for more than just the degradation, corruption, and sex, I think you'll understand.

* * *

Afterparty

Dimly, beyond the flickering haze of warm red, there was the sensation of being rocked. There was hot pressure compressing flesh and folding bones. Tendons were too tired to feel anything or recognize what they were, where they were, or what their purpose was.

But he understood warmth: it was a primal element he recalled from before he was ever ejected from the unfriendly terrain of the womb. Perhaps that is where the deception began; the insistence that there could be warmth for even him. The tightly held form, rocking hard, battered and weak, wanted to fill out until there was nothing but surface area to touch. He wanted to strain against the too tight embrace. He wanted to blow up like a goat's bladder and explode against the warm constriction of tight bands of heat, against the warm thrum of a foreign beat.

A thing known as sound was another part of mostly sightless existence, but it did not matter. The sounds made no sense, they came from indiscernible sources, they battered through him and against parts of his form he didn't recall. What mattered was the surface and how it constricted and constrained. More pressure was needed to constrict the stuff of soft, empty, existence into something hard and impenetrable.

The warm red haze became black; coolness assaulted his form where there was no pressure. He had no strength or faith in his senseless tendons and did not fight the loss of half his warmth. Not when the sounds grew sharper, more invasive, nor when all warmth was lost and the tangle of flesh and bone was dropped and spread out over a cold, hard surface. The blackness claimed him in a frigid vice and for a time he knew nothing, nothing at all.

A sharp odor stabbed sharply through his nostrils, straight into his brain, giving sudden and hateful clarity to the world.

His thickly fringed eyes snapped open as did his crusted lips. Like he had at birth, Shadash screamed and thrashed in blind, horrified, confusion. In response, a heavy weight crushed over him. The weight was warm and, though there was a violent edge to it, he found it comforting.

The noises were hard and fast, but his understanding was slow. He continued to scream, knowing the pressure would leave if he stopped, knowing he would no longer have that suffocating protection. There would be something he had to face if the pressure was removed and he feared whatever it was would claim his life.

Survival condensed down to a single pure shrieked note.

Popping noises followed, tinkling noises after that, prickling sensations, screams, and then a wad of rough material was forced into his mouth. His piercing cry was softened into uselessness.

"By the gods! The tea glasses! The wine bottles!"

Deprived of his voice, Shadash subsided and began to process the sharp-edged shapes his eyes had tried to deny. Nasoos was on top of him, Lolah was holding her head, the ceiling above him belonged in the back kitchen: a place well insulated against the clatter of cutlery and butchery. Off to one side Mirna, the afternoon manager was surveying broken bottles of vinegar, olive oil, and various fish and vegetable stocks. Her husband, Yato, was shaking a finger at the injured form of his masters' most popular entertainer. Shadash stared at him, not comprehending the dancing finger in his face.

Nasoos was quickly shoved away, replaced by the profile of the daytime chaperone. No doubt she was there to collect as much information as possible for her guild. It was just as well; Shadash sold them more information than his owners knew.

The young dancer could not find his fingers to lift the gag from his mouth. He let his head fall to the side; his mouth opened and closed, passively working the dish towel loose. It did not fall fully away, it stuck to his face with caked dirt, adhering to the thick fluid congealed to his face.

_I threw up..._ Blinking against the confusion, he looked to Lolah for help. She was paid to care for the house entertainers, though that care hardly extended in an emotional sense. Lolah was a failed cleric who had lost her deity's favor and the healing abilities that came with it. Her healing arts were anything but magical and less than expensive. She made most of her living off animal husbandry.

She was still rubbing uselessly at her ears when she noted his gaze. "Stupid boy," she scolded loudly. "You're home safe! No more of that banshee wail. Gods, you'll bring Terthus the Voice Thief back from the dead like that."

Not even mention of the man once feared by all who valued their voices phased him. There was no home. There was no safety. Shadash's mouth opened and shut a few more times for good measure, but he made no sound and the rag still clung. There was nothing to rely on. The pressure was unrelenting, eternal, the only true reality.

People flashed through his mind. There were his patrons of both genders that paid to use his body in every way imaginable. There were the merchants that wanted his money; money that bought the use of his body. There were his owners that wanted the money he brought in. There were the chaperones and bodyguards that kept them caged and sometimes reaped favors through the threat of violence. There were the other entertainers who generally fought over every copper and careless glance the customers gave them.

His hazy mind went deeper into dangerous territory. He thought of Aisha, whom he had liked and whom he had once loved in his own way. He thought of his mother; a woman said to have been dead in all but body. Who had given him suck? Not her. Why had he been weaned at all? For profit. Like an animal. There was no mother, just a body that squeezed tissue out.

Lolah pulled Shadash up into a sitting position and ripped the gag from his crusted mouth. His finely tone muscles were lax, his once white linen pants and silk sarong were yellow with vomited curry, gray with dirt from the street. His hair hung about his face in sticky tendrils. Many of the trademark jewels he wore in his hair were missing. Both eyes, red and green, were staring blankly.

"Did somebody cast a spell on him?" Lolah asked bluntly.

Childish fantasies of magnificent sires danced before his eyes. The visions were more humiliating than anything anyone had ever done to his body. They were stupid, childish, wretched fantasies of brilliant, handsome men, dark of skin and studded with emeralds and sapphires that sparkled in bright sunlight. At one time, each of these fantasy men had come to Shadash in his dark hours. When his body was numb from abuse, when his mind was unhinged from smoking opium or drinking alcohol, when he could no longer move due to ropes, injury, or starvation.

These men did not exist. There was no mother, there was no father, there was no home, there was no safety, there was no caring, there was no savior. There was nothing. Shadash was devoid of all but the horrendous sucking pain of emptiness. He felt keenly the isolation of complete singularity in a world of cold grabbing hands. Seventeen years or more of being unloved and a good portion of elven longevity to appreciate it.

All his life Shadash faced his life with utterly outraged defiance. His armor was often battered, his heart ultimately broken, but he faced every challenge without giving up. All he had was his spirit, which was never tamed, no matter what befell his form. No matter how bad things became, he always fought back.

But this time the pain was too much. His dream exposed for the naive fantasy it was, Shadash was humiliated in a way he had never thought possible. The deepest dream of all, beyond the visions of a charitable father, was to be loved and this only hope was shattered.

All those within the kitchen had seen him wail and cry before and they all knew that such moments were brief and theatrical. They were simple performances which worried no one. But when the boy began to shake like the leaf his back resembled, they knew something was different. And when the tears filled his eyes and slipped down his face, they began to worry. When he made no noise and shook, but his expression remained blank and empty, they wondered if they would need to find a new source of income.


	12. tea time

_(A/N: Such tardiness on my part. I really hope this makes up for it. Not only did I borrow a computer for this, I had to have Witchwolf e-mail me my rough drafts (praise her!), then download ff dot net's free OpenOffice software when I discovered my borrowed computer didn't have Word. By the way, I don't fancy OpenOffice, but the price (or lack thereof) is nice.)_

_(Erg, bad job editing. Now fixed.)  
_

* * *

_**tea time**_

Once every tendays, due to a lack of customers in the late afternoon, the entertainers at Shadash's teahouse would come together for their traditional afternoon tea. They used the scant hours of free time past the midday performance to run mundane and mysterious errands, train apprentices, and perhaps trade performance tips. Tea time in the cool darkness of the teahouse was more of a raging gossip session over fragrant drinks and elaborate playing cards than anything delicate or formal.

There were seven entertainers seated amongst a bevy of comfortable silk cushions. They were situated in a circle, with six young apprentices waiting on them, as was part of their training. The lot of them ranged in age, race, and demeanor, but they all had the same shifty eyes when cards were in their hands and silver and gold on the expensive carpet.

Shadash was not as skilled with cards nor as skilled as the others at cheating with them. He judged how well a session went by the severity of the amounts he lost or how well he could derail the game. A very sore loser, he was known to scowl, curse, and throw his cards around. The other performers enjoyed provoking him in addition to taking his money. It was hard to say which activity was more sweet to his compatriots when Shadash's tongue had a propensity for the bitter.

The consolation which kept him coming back to the tea party, was the hoard of information he gathered from the small talk gleaned from the others. There was no doubt in his mind that one or two of the other entertainers were in the same sideline as he, but while Shadash was terrible at cards, he liked to think he was a winner when it came to deciphering the information coming secondhand from patrons and casual customers.

Losing was a corrosive element for the young dancer, but in the long run, information covered his frequent losses. This time he was out for information about a former patron. As he contemplated his depleting gambling money and how to bring up the subject, he spared a hand to absently scratch the house's fox behind the ears. The long-tamed animal took to Shadash on the basis of boy's constant, almost pathological, wooing.

"The matchmaker is at Lolah again," Feshi smirked, laying down a crown card. He was not sure if the groans that followed were about his news or the card that made him the likely winner. "Nasoos paid the woman to tell Lolah he's the right one."

To his dismay, what he thought would be a tasty tidbit gathered no pigeons.

"Old news," snorted Cahm, placing a wagon card on the carpet. "Boring news. This isn't the first time he's done that."

Feshi looked at the wagon card with suspicion; it was too important a card to hand off unless one had two. Possibly it was a sacrifice to Jadiqa; it was one of the only cards that could travel once played and the muscular dancer played next.

"You're new here Feshi," Jadiqa shrugged, picking up the wagon card and scratching his fashionably bristly chin with it. The scratching noise set the fox's ears a-swivel from its nest in Shadash's lap. "You have no idea the shamefully stupid things Nasoos has done to win Lolah's cold heart."

"They say her god removed her heart," Chidi tittered helpfully from Feshi's other side, "when she removed herself from the temple."

Shadash rolled his mismatched eyes when the vacuous teenager's apprentice echoed the laughter and sipped his mint tea noisily in insult. Chidi was the house's prime belly dancer and had nearly every trait a Calishite man would want in a woman, minus all-important good breeding. Of all the entertainers in the house, it was surmised she was the most likely to enjoy the dark side of their profession. As a result, she was hated with a passion that was usually reserved for the management. In return, she had become a strangely good-humored inhouse extortionist.

Jadiqa spared Chidi's apprentice a menacing look that shut the girl up immediately before turning back to the cards. It looked as if he was about to toss the wagon back down, but then his gaze lingered on Cahm for a moment. A moment later he tucked the card into his hand and threw her a wink. "Do you want me to pull you?"

Cahm's eyes gave her away, but only because she wanted them to. "What do you think?" When he put the card back down paired with a stallion it seemed answer enough.

All eyes turned to Shadash. They found him staring blankly at his cards; it would be a good hand if somebody played a moon. It was the one card he needed to complete the set; he would then have all the cards necessary to represent a famous Calimshan legend. Nobody knew he had the deck's only Djinn. Moons were as common as sand and most people had discarded them the first two rounds, himself included. With none on the top of any played piles, he could not make his play. He could only wait until the forced discard and dealing round destroyed his chances.

It was certain that everyone expected him to play along with the wagon card. If enough people donated a good card, they would beat Feshi. The winnings would be low, but they would accrue no losses. Shadash looked at the grinning djinn and then at Jadiqa's handsome face.

"Don't mislead Feshi," the dark-skinned dancer remarked. "Nasoos got a hold of Pasha Wroning's diviner; that's hardly old news."

Many eyes around the ring grew wide at the proclamation; it was a new chapter to an old legend. "Now, older brother Jadiqa," Shadash continued in bored tones, "I hear your old lady--"

"Formerly _your_ old lady," Jadiqa leered.

"--picked up a suitor. Is it true? Has she found someone better than Jadiqa?" Shadash toyed with a card, making it apparent he was deciding whether to play along with the wagon or not.

The older dancer scowled and lifted his gilt tea glass to his lips to buy time. Shadash was a terrible player, always letting his emotions get the better of him, but he knew how to get what he wanted. The wealthy widow had found the attention of the vizier's eldest son, and that meant Jadiqa would soon be tossed aside... or dead. The situation had the man secretly terrified; he hoped she would quit her patronage as soon as possible but she had yet to make any indication.

"It is always smart to trade up, Shadash," the man growled, his perfectly white teeth apparent in his Calishite-dark face. "Aren't you honored that she went from you to me?"

A faint smile lifted the corner of Shadash's fine lips at Jadiqa's confirmation rather than the implied insult. "Honored? But Jadiqa, who could be better than you? Like fine wine, you've improved with age. Certainly Jadiqa isn't getting any younger, is he? No, your body is fine, older brother, but no matter the exotic oils or goat milk, you cannot prevent the creases in your skin forever. Did she look into a younger man?"

The older dancer rose to his knees and hissed with such venom that the fennec started forward from the bed he had made of Shadash's legs. Both the fox and Shadash watched Jadiqa closely, noting the way his muscles twitched with the passionate desire to embed the darker skinned dancer's teeth to the gums in his solid knuckles. All eyes were on the eldest dancer; he was so intense that no one thought to place bets on whether there would be a fight or not. There would be no bet on who would win; Jadiqa's patrons often pitted him against dancers from other teahouses.

"The grand vizier's son, Leafback. Better I should lose her to greatness than you should lose her because she heard where you started out. At least I was sold here by my brothers." Slowly, very slowly, he lowered himself until he was sitting back on his heels. Hatred continued to fuel his gaze, a sudden loathing so intense that it could not fail to spill over his tongue. "And where did you come from? We all know you were some disease-spawned whore-dropping; squeezed out in the Avenue's backstreet sewage! We all saw the scorpion pit and pain-whore scars they paid to have removed! There's never been a filthier piece of refuse allowed berth in this house and you, more than all of us, know it! You may be a viper, but you can't shed your filthy skin!"

The hush that followed Jadiqa's lengthy outburst was heavy with poisonous tension. If there was one sure way to prompt Shadash into a frenzy, it was to remind him of his origins. All the dancers knew the danger and warned the apprentices assigned to work with him. More than one ignorant apprentice had run screaming through the main room with bright red hand prints on their cheeks and a snarling dancer hot on their heels.

For the second time, all eyes switched to Shadash, waiting for his volatile temper to explode. For a moment, the boy's face was blank. The tension grew as he sat motionless, staring at Jadiqa. The tension became a malignant beast that spared no one. Two of the apprentices closest to Shadash inched carefully away. One of the entertainers moaned softly with fear. Surely Shadash would curse them all with his potent evil eye.

Then Shadash's lips moved and all feared the terrible words he would speak. Would he speak set the curse in his strange native tongue? "You were born on this level, Jadiqa," he began calmly, "but you will fall to where I began. I was born amongst the maggots, but I will rise until I die encrusted in jewels; enshrined by princes and princesses. Those who do not climb the sand dune eventually sink to the bottom, those who continually strive will be rewarded with the summit. Let all who will not forsake you ride your corpse to the bottom."

His expression was one of complete seriousness until he completed his speech. Then his lips quirked into a leering grin. Without looking at his cards, he found the djinn card and held it up beside his face so that two sets of wicked eyes seemed to stare back at Jadiqa and his paling face. "Djinn destroys alliances, because he needs none."

The card dropped from his fingers and fell onto Jadiqa's modest discard pile. The wagon and stallion cards were rendered useless. Feshi sighed in delayed relief; Shadash had just insured his victory. The dancer didn't care that he'd given Feshi a break; he simply tossed the rest of his cards into the space between he and Jadiqa. They fluttered to the floor haphazardly as the young dancer stood up.

"You ruined your chances at winning just to spite me," Jadiqa snorted. He was recovering from Shadash's theatrical pronouncement and implied curse. He wanted nothing more than to minimize how foolish he felt by turning the feeling back on the other. He was not successful.

"The kind of person that puts out his own eye in order to take the eye of an enemy?" Shadash grinned like a madman, rising to stand over the others. "I'm that type."

Such words did Jadiqa's heart no good.

* * *

_Next up: _Good Side, Bad Side _wherein a shadow of the past nearly unravels our anti-hero by presence alone. The longest scene to date and probably my favorite._


	13. to be left

(A/N: I'm trying to put these in chronological order now, so it isn't as difficult to follow. The only problem seems to be I have a scene gestating in my brain that happens between this scene and the previous one. As for the editing on this; I overhauled the dialogue to make it less sophisticated since the two characters here are both barely teens. )

_to be left_

"The blood hasn't looked like this before," Shadash commented as he held a fresh hand towel out before the tired girl. She took the offering and placed the blackish-red one in his other hand. He didn't mind blood on his skin; it was a natural by-product of their livelihood.

"The blood is thick," Aisha mumbled listlessly. She wiped her stained hands on the new cloth and pressed it up between her equally stained thighs. "I think this is the woman's curse."

"You're just saying that because you took weight," the boy smirked, but secretly he was relieved the last man had not seriously injured her. It meant he could soon cheer her up with good news he had eavesdropped that morning while applying gold enamel to the owner's nails. She believed the fumes would affect his mind, but he'd only acted the part as she fanned them into his face.

"Please," Aisha scoffed, "the last one couldn't put a dimple in a newborn's cheek. No, I think this is the other thing. I should laugh or cry?"

The slender boy shrugged his angular shoulders and plunged the used towel into the tub of soapy water between his knees. He had been doing laundry when another so-called dancer had relayed Aisha's condition. It was simple enough to take the basin with him as well as good sense.

"You get time off your back, Aisha," he mused helpfully as he scrubbed away again. "You don't like what they do to you, so this is good. You'll have to do more chores, but you won't have customers all the time, either. It is a good thing."

Cheap glass earrings tinkling softly, the girl with curves beyond her scant thirteen years shook her head. "No. I think this means I can make a baby."

Her eyes were pools of stifled hysteria slicked with sadness. Clamping her thighs on the towel, she sat up enough to reach out to him. Shadash continued to wash the stained hand towel; he pretended he did not see her hand reaching out to him. Shadash didn't know how many times had he seen this scene: a woman with bloody hands and thighs reaching out for him. For anyone. Prostitution was hard on both genders, but the presence of a womb inclined the boy to suppose the scales tipped against women. It was a sentiment he hadn't enough sympathy to voice aloud, not even to his friend.

"Run away with me...!" she whispered harshly to the more experienced boy. Her voice was rough with tears she didn't want to shed. "We can leave the Avenue, the city, the country. Come, Shadash, it would be better to die _out there_ than live in here! I don't want a baby before I'm married!"

Running was a thought that appealed to Shadash only in fancy; he knew it was never so simple. Aisha had only been in the lower rung teahouse for a year and before that she'd been the daughter of a widowed carpet weaver. Even though she was poor before, she didn't know how wicked and depraved Calimport could be. Shadash knew, in detail, every bad thing that could happen on the streets. If his body had not experienced the worst of it, he had stood a numb witness to the rest.

The hand towel was losing pieces of fabric under the hard strokes from his hands as he thought over her desperate plea. Dying on the street was a much worse fate than prostitution or the scorpion pits. And who was she to think of marriage?

He had to squeeze his eyes tight against the encroaching scorn that often poisoned his young heart. When he replied, he tried to keep the unwanted anger from his voice. "There's no need to put yourself in danger. You have an offer from Answal's tea house in one of the outer wards. He was looking for young girls with pretty eyes, nimble hands, and clumsy feet. You were perfect."

"Answal..?" The girl looked at the dark skinned boy in confusion. She was too new to understand the extensive network her forced servitude was only a small part of. "Clumsy feet? What kind of place is it? They don't want me to dance?"

Horror played slowly across her face, for if she was not wanted for the farce that dancing was on Avenue Paradise, then it sounded as if she would go somewhere even worse. Dancing was only lip service to Calimshan's harsh laws; most of the action in low rung tea houses had more to do with backs on the floor and feet in the air rather than the other way around.

He wasn't so kind that he couldn't take pleasure at her mistake; he smiled at the look of dread. "Stupid. You are leaving the Avenue for a better place that only uses girls. Answal is a well-known wizard that sells magic supplies; his tea house is a sideline. That probably means his girls don't get diseases or full of babies. If you're going to look sad it better be because I'm still stuck here and I'm going to have that nasty rash longer than those ugly sores you keep getting."

Aisha's eyes were struck with the sunlight that filtered into her stall from the ripped canvas above. Forgetting herself completely, she rose shakily to her feet and tried to grab the boy. Grimacing at the blood that would surely stain his clothes, Shadash took a step back, but this did not dissuade the girl.

She lunged for him, overturning his wash basin in the process, and fell over him, taking them both to the hay-strewn floor. The water flooded the floor and rendered Shadash's thin clothes transparent. Neither cared, for nudity was not the same as nakedness to their way of thinking. Their hair hung in wet tendrils about their shoulders, but still they shared laughter between them.

"Aisha," he groaned, slapping the top of her head, "do you know how hard I'll be caned for the loss of so much water?"

"Shadash, you ass!" She giggled and grabbed at his thin wrists, "I'll tell old Answal you're a young girl and with that willow-like figure he'll come to his senses and take you, too!"

The boy only shook his head, sea kelp hair plastered to his dark skin. "No, I'd never pass inspection; he's humans only."

And deep in his heart he was glad for Aisha, for she was his first and only friend. But he resented her, too, for she was beautiful and new to the Avenue and would escape their prison to a better cage before him. It was hard to celebrate, to return her relieved grin, when he knew his hard work had only brought him out of the gutter and scorpion pits, and into the most deplorable of Avenues.

"Besides," he continued, running a hand over her back and the young swell of her backside, "it takes longer for a boy to move up in the world. I don't have these fun curves like you do. If there really is balance, it is that when you're beautiful, you don't have to work as hard to reach the top, but when you do it is easier for you to fall."

Sadness filtered back into Aisha's eyes as she lay atop the exotic young boy. She stroked his cheek with more honesty than any of the men or women that paid to do the same. "Shadash, that's not balance, that's what my mother called a paradox."

He first closed his red eye and then his green, enjoying the feeling of her hand on his face and for the first time, the weight and warmth of a body on top of his. "If you get away from Answal's place, if you ascend higher heights, if you become free, come back for me, Aisha."

"I will," she whispered solemnly, but though she was sincere, Shadash's ears only fed him ashes.

Shadash did not cry that night nor did he see her off days later when she was taken away. Instead, he did everything he could to forget and he worked hard, very hard, to please visitors. It was not her fault, he told himself, that she was elevated before him. Life was harder for her, he mumbled as he was degraded a hundred different ways. It was wrong to be jealous of a friend, he mused. She had nothing to do with the injustice of the world, the unfairness of life, he sang in Shadashite as he danced in one of the teahouse's many smoky rooms.

But before long, he hated her anyway.


	14. become what you fear

_Too long since an update. Between a flight to NY and having my wisdom teeth pulled yesterday, I've found some time. And meds. Geh. Pain. Sorry, this edition is really weak. Next installments: cherry lips parts 1-3. Yes. Cherry lips. The writing gets better after that. Promise.  
_

* * *

_become what you fear_

Cahm, Jadiqa, and Shadash were drunk, they were also out of their minds on potent incense and herbs. Shadash had taken less than the other two, for he was slighter of body and faster of metabolism, but they had needed it more than he had. The other two had been scheduled for a debauched bachelor party while Shadash had been serving a small group of artists. His guests were much less demanding of him, though his body was chafed and wet in all the usual places between long drags of the water pipe.

It was only a few hours before sunrise when Jadiqa and Cahm roused Shadash from sleep in the basin they all used to bathe in. They did not particularly like one another. Cahm and Jadiqa often spent time together; they even shared a bed, but it was little more than creature comfort. Neither of them liked Shadash and Shadash actively disliked the other two, but there were moments of camaraderie. And drugs and alcohol lent them the capacity to give each other a bit of grace.

Shadash lingered in the water before falling back into a role he had taken long ago with Aisha. He took up hand towels and soaped and rinsed the other two entertainers thoroughly. They giggled amongst themselves when they stepped out of the basin and began drying themselves off. Then they tried on each others' jewelry and attempted to wear each others' clothing. This was not so strange for Shadash and Jadiqa, for they often traded clothing to keep a fresh appearance, but it was not the same with Cahm.

Cahm was not the ideal Calimshan beauty. Her hips were not wide, nor her breasts full-ripe; it was rumored the elven blood running through her veins kept her best features under-developed. Of course, it was also rumored that Shadash was of a long lost jungle tribe across the waters or that he was the offspring of a djinn. The trouble was that she was too slim and petite for well toned and muscular Jadiqa to fit in her clothes as was his wont. Instead, it had to be Shadash dressed in skirts while Cahm's bodice of sequins and crystals made Jadiqa an ungainly vest.

Jadiqa wore Shadash's sarong and Cahm wore Shadash's pants and Jadiqa's heavy gold collar which only just covered her largish nipples. None of them really cared, but smothered laughter as they looked at each other.

When Nasoos called in to them to shut up and go to bed, they laughed harder but muffled themselves better. On Shadash's suggestion, they retired to his tiny room and against his better judgment, showed them a secret. Over the course of several months the dancer had converted the bars in his window to a grate. It was removable and allowed him to escape the premises without a chaperone. It made it much easier for the boy to slip away in order to sell information to Marya's brood.

More giggling commenced as they crawled over Shadash's silk-strewn bunk and escaped into the night. For once, Shadash was not afraid to run out into the night; he had two people with him. Perhaps they were not his friends, perhaps they were not reliable, but if they were attacked, he was certain attackers would be slowed by Jadiqa and Cahm while he ran on.

Only a few hours before dawn, the streets of Dancer's Gate were desolate. All that could be found were drunks and addicts on their way home and the derelicts and drunken that had passed out in the gutters. Three dancers with nothing better to do, high as the moon and drunk enough to wear each others clothing, were not a nice thing to encounter if you were even more helpless than they.

Jadiqa was the first to see a man passed out in an alley. The moon revealed the man for the drunk he was and soon all three dancers were crouched around him, their shadows eclipsing his unsuspecting form.

Cahm proposed they steal his clothes. Jadiqa thought it might be amusing to piss in his face, except he usually got paid for doing things like that. When he stopped laughing at Jadiqa's remark, Shadash said it could be fun to beat the drunk up.

The three looked at each other under the slim light offered by the moon. Their expressions had lost all mirth as they thought over the possible enjoyment in beating a defenseless drunk.

Cahm looked down at the unsuspecting man and murmured, "How many times have bastards like this have slapped a tambourine out of my hands and torn my veil in his haste to spread my thighs?"

Her sentiment was echoed by Jadiqa's resolute tenor. "Even though I'm strong, it only makes them want to see me scream more."

"I don't care," Shadash huffed, spitting on the man. "He's on the street and the streets are not kind."

He quickly crouched down and rifled the man's clothing. There was nothing of value to be found. He opened the man's mouth and sniffed his breath; the liquor he'd imbibed was cheap. Satisfied the man was unaffiliated, Shadash's lips split in a wide smile. He stood up and then he slammed his sandaled heel down on the drunk's gut.

And thus began the furious morning three cross-dressed dancers tore through the desolate streets of Dancer's Gate, beating up drunks, throwing them down stairs, pushing them into sewers, stealing their clothes, and biting their bleeding knuckles to muffle the laughter.


	15. cherry lips

**If you are directed here by an alert, you will find the new chapter under the title, **_**after party**_**. I have shuffled the content to reflect my original order of writing rather than chronological order.**

Return of the Disclaimer: The recognizable characters in this fanfiction were created by R. A. Salvatore in association with the legal entity Wizards of the Coast, who owns relevant copyrights to additional Forgotten Realms material referred to herein. The characters are used without permission but no material profit of any kind is being made from the following work. WotC reserve rights to Forgotten Realms material, but all of the characters and situations unique to this work of fan fiction are property of the writer.

A/N: Written many months ago after listening to a song of the same name by Garbage. In present tense because I was e-mailing Witchwolf something about present tense at the time. The bread thing comes as homage to Chun K. Young's, _Unplugged Boy_. Next up: _teatime _(in which Shadash is vindictive) or _good side/bad side_ (in which Shadash is actually a sympathetic character).

_cherry lips, i_

The boy gasps hard and then sucks in a strangled breath as pain vaults up his spine. He is not convinced the man crushing him against the wall is displeased with his reaction. In fact, Shadash suspects the man is a sadistic bastard. If the slender boy was not sure the brute would take vengeance, he would scream in the shrill voice he's found useful to annoy his peers.

Instead, as he is manhandled, Shadash limits himself to cursing violently underneath the swelling music the teahouse's drunken bard creates outside. When he is suddenly pulled away from the wall, the pressure does not abate, the pain does not fade, his internal organs squirm in rebellion, but stay put. Everything is not entirely where it should be, but it is enough.

The dancer gasps for breath as Nasoos' hands release him and Jadiqa's foot comes off his back. It is an amazing thing that Shadash does not have time to get lips around stinging commentary before Jadiqa is shoving the dancer's arms through the straps of a filmy bodice. Feshi is suddenly before him, painting his lips wet cherry, lining his mismatched eyes with kohl.

They work hard and fast partly because there is no time and partly because they don't want to hear Shadash's bitching. The whole situation would not be happening if Cahm hadn't twisted her ankle knocking a drunk's teeth out. And they would not have been kicking out teeth, if Shadash hadn't shown them how fun it could be.

As soon as the bodice is secure, Jadiqa drops to his knees and thrusts his hands under the layers of gauze veils. Shadash grimaces and slaps the older dancer's head repeatedly as his genitalia are tucked as securely as possible into Cahm's lacy undergarments. The corset is worse, he tells himself, the corset is much worse.

The moment Feshi takes away the make up, Shadash is free to screech like a wildcat. "I'm not doing this! I can't breathe! I can't sing like this and I don't know how I'll dance without my balls getting strangled! Send one of the real girls!"

From the sidelines comes his manager's voice, steel wrapped in silk. "Child, he asked for our most skilled female dancer. His people paid us twice the normal rate to have the place to himself in order to impress his business partner. These are dangerous people. Do you really think Scanza or even Chidi have half the talent of Cahm? You've nearly the talent she has; you'll have to do. Just keep that red eyes of yours away from them and show those lovely legs."

Jadiqa ducks out from under the filmy skirts and slaps Shadash's ass. "And your rear; it is nice like Cahm's. You'll gain definition with age; enjoy the smoothness while you can."

Mismatched eyes roll in fear and disgust, his ringed fingers point at his chest ferociously. "How have you missed the fact that I have no tits? _I have no tits!_"

"Neither does Cahm," Feshi snorts, and receives Jadiqa's hand across his face for the effort.

"Shut up, Feshi!"

"I do have tits," Cahm chuckles as she enters the scene, limping painfully. She has a small basket looped over her elbow and a crutch under her arm. Her movements are a grotesque mockery of her former grace. "I have a pair of tits right here."

Shadash doesn't make the connection; he's entranced by the basket and the smell of fresh baked bread. "Did you visit the baker?" he asks, his mind momentarily away from the corset crushing the breath from him, the panties that are cutting into sensitive flesh.

Cahm nods, handing the basket to a confused Jadiqa. The older dancer reaches in and takes a fresh roll. "Thank you, Cahm. It is a kind ges—"

"They aren't for you, Jadi," she laughs, taking the roll out of his hand. She steps up to Shadash.

"I can't fit that in me while I'm in this corset," Shadash protests weakly, though he wants it even if it smudges the wet rouge on his lips or makes the bodice burst.

"It doesn't have to fit in _you_," she sneers. Cahm seizes one of the bodice's straps and shoves a warm bun into a shallow cup. "Careful; they're custard-filled."

Shadash's slanting eyes grow perfectly round as the fresh bread warms his dark brown skin. His mouth is no longer wet with hunger, but dry with horror. "This man and his business partner are heavy drinkers, yes?"

---

_ii._

He moves through Avenue Paradise like a breeze through stale smoke, leaving a rippling tide of personal space in his wake. Those who see into his cowled cloak and know his face are wise enough to stay out of his way. They melt into the shadows, even though they know he owns them. Some know him simply by his flowing gait and compact frame. He is not a large man, but the most deadly of scorpions are small in size.

At one time their fear amused him, now he expects it; it is his due. He notes their flickering movements; the prostitutes' eyes widen in fear and narrow in hatred when they think he does not see. He does not trust professional prey; the weak creatures that allow themselves to be beaten and debased for coin. He trusts in fallible human nature, but he never wastes time on creatures without pride. They are cattle and they are wise to shrink back or scatter as he approaches.

He despises them because his fate came perilously close to theirs when he landed penniless and traumatized on the streets of Calimport at a tender age. He hates them because he sees what he hates in himself when he looks at them. Though they are valuable information gatherers, Entreri never deals with them directly.

Far older and wiser than the day he first crossed the Calim desert, he is now a shark cutting through territorial waters on his way to Dancer's Gate to meet a business prospect. On the surface Erdem's invitation was garbed in the guise of his superior's request to make reliable contacts with the guild Entreri represents. Erdem is a local, but his superiors are smugglers and pirates from far-flung reaches.

The business prospect doesn't interest him at all, but the underlying possibility does; he suspects Erdem wants to hire him to create a vacancy in the higher ranks of the smuggling operation. It has been too long since the assassin sank his blades to the hilts in a challenge.

The designated teahouse is not far into the entertainment district. Entreri descends a stair that leads into the upper reaches of Dancers' Gate and makes his way to the middle rung establishment below street level. The teahouse is one of the finest of the middle rung houses and is widely regarded for the artistic quality of its supposedly exotic entertainers.

He doesn't care how skilled the entertainers are; he knows they all have a price that tips them on their backs. The mere fact that Erdem has invited him to such an establishment suggests the smuggler doesn't know enough about the assassin. Other powerful people have made the same mistake; it always reduces his respect for them, if there was any available to begin with.

Though it is approaching the hottest hours of the afternoon, Entreri encounters no other patron as he enters the expansive underground establishment. Obviously Erdem has decided to impress the assassin with the wealth at his disposal; wine and tea houses located beneath street level are the most popular places to go when the sun is high and cruel. The assassin brushes past the pretty servers and focuses on the center of the empty room where the smuggler is seated on an expensive silk carpet.

Erdem greets him enthusiastically, as if he actually knows him. They have never met; only exchanged messages through intermediaries. The familiarity is returned with a glare that is every bit the emotional equivalent of Entreri's famed emerald dagger. The smuggler blanches under his beard, but recovers quickly and calls for the servers to bring more wine.

Soon Entreri is sitting on the carpet sipping mint tea; his host and the servers have stopped trying to entice him with wine or food. The assassin is strictly professional and if Erdem wants to recover any respect at all, he'll quickly learn that the road to Entreri's cold heart is paved with straightforward expediency.

He listens to Erdem, his attention sharpening only when business matters begin to give the small talk weight. As the man speaks, using expansive hand gestures to illustrate his words, the assassin watches. The wine in Erdem's glass often comes perilously close to escaping over the side and serves to further fill out Entreri's habitual profiling.

_Ambitious. Enjoys the privileges of rank and wealth. Reckless._ The assassin's thoughts are not judgmental, but strictly observational; they will dictate whether he will take a job from Erdem and what his asking price may be. The only thing saving the smuggler from an abrupt walkout is the man's intelligence.

The moment Erdem's voice begins to lower in volume and his boisterous tone turns to talk of change in the organization, Entreri turns his head slightly. He looks at the man in a princely gesture that conveys his interest.

Erdem recognizes this move; Entreri has given him nothing at all to act on until now. As a social creature, Entreri's lack of reaction has been making Erdem nothing but slightly nervous. It is one thing to display his wealth and power by emptying one of the most popular houses in Dancers Gate, but it is quite another heady thing altogether to sit with the most famous killer in Calimport. To know that the mere turn of his head indicates Entreri is more interested in killing someone for Erdem than any business dealing... that makes the wine's intoxication pale in comparison.

He looks quickly to his red wine and makes the obvious connection to blood. He imagines Entreri offering him a jeweled goblet overflowing with a superior's heart blood. It occurs faintly to the smuggler that the assassin's face is actually attractive. Erdem can find beauty in anyone when they have the means to his desires.

He is about to continue speaking when the music swells for the second time, indication that the entertainment he paid for is soon to be underway.

"Ah, the Lady Cahm is said to have faerie lineage," Erdem comments, killing Entreri's mood again. "I'm told she is the finest dancer in this house."

Entreri looks away from the man in irritation. He doesn't care how fine a dancer the girl is; to him she's just a talented prostitute. It occurs to him that Erdem may intend to purchase some of the girl's time in order to entertain the assassin's libido, rather than just a fruitless attempt to captivate his eyes. Erdem is not fortunate enough to see the killer's sudden sneer.

The first thing they see come out of shadow and into the sunlight pouring down from the circular skylight is a bare, slender, and very dark foot. Equally slender ankles are heavily festooned with gold anklets and velvet-lined bands laden with bells. An exquisite amount of bare leg follows, until gauze veils part on either side of a long thigh. The girl's movements are slow and sinuous as she bends and twists to prolong her entry into the light.

Despite himself, Entreri is impressed at the muscle control exhibited. Beside him Erdem's mouth has gone dry and he hasn't even seen the size of her breasts.

Her hands dive slowly into the light. The zils on her fingers have yet to ring as she moves her arms like snakes that swim among the waves of music a bard is skillfully weaving. All at once, as if it were natural and unplanned, the bard strikes into a heated rhythm and the dancer, Cahm, throws herself into the sunlight. The jewelry and shimmering veils are dazzling; all pastel on Chultan-dark skin. Her whole body churns in amazing arcs that are independent, yet in perfect communication with each other. She is swimming in air. Her body makes love to the sunlight pouring over her in golden radiance.

Entreri knows immediately that she's wearing a wig, but he wasn't counting on her perfume to smell like fresh baked bread. He knows better than to think that is why Erdem's mouth is now watering.

---

_iii._

The killer makes no indication when he realizes the dancer is actually a boy, instead, he recalls Erdem's words that 'the Lady Cahm' has faerie blood. From the tapered ears, sinuous body and small stature, Entreri has deduced that the boy is part elven. It is the flash of a pale red eye and skin the color of burned sugar that invite caution. He has seen drow halfbreeds before and he knows he's looking at another. It is annoying to be wary of a young boy with bread strategically placed in his bodice; but it is also survival.

Erdem is overcome and utterly oblivious to the dancer's gender. He was most interested to see how her breasts would move as she danced, but has since become riveted to a new vice. His dark eyes hardly leave the dancer's ass; he's glimpsed it several times through the layers of transparent veils and waits anxiously for the next view.

Conversely, Shadash can only remember one other time in his life when he has been this terrified. He is dancing for the merciless lieutenant of the Basadoni guild; rumored to be the true head of the organization. There's not an entertainer, prostitute, or courtesan that's ever been on the Avenue that doesn't know the man's hatred for workers in the sex industry. Worse yet, how angry can the man be, certainly knowing that before him dances a fake?

His heart beats faster than the song's beat; his body begins to move out of sync with the music. When he feels the wrongness between his body and the rhythm, the young dancer throws a glance at his mentor; the ruined bard dancing fingers over a sitar.

The drunkard is not well into his cups and reads the look. He closes his eyes and _feels_ for what Shadash will do next. The dancer does not work well with others, so it is fortunate that the bard still does.

Shadash's body slows and his accompaniment follows suit. He stills his arms but swirls his hips in maddening figure eights, hypnotizing Erdem with lust, pulling the man's desire forward to cloud his vision. Belts of gold coins around his abdomen and hemming Cahm's skirts ring out like waves of bells lapping at an invisible shore. He wills the magic to come and it does not disappoint him.

The sensation grows from his diaphragm and spreads in a comforting wave, sending warmth throughout his veins, until a net of assurance threads through his flesh. He opens his mouth to give it voice.

And Cahm's bitter voice is transformed into a crystal bell.

In the back room, Jadiqa and Feshi stare at Cahm in shock. Having never heard her voice as the other two, Cahm scowls at them to cover her confusion.

Shadash sings in what he perceives is Cahmish, using his hard-found skill to shape what he believes would be the most perfect version of her sharp tongue. It remains bitter, but it is compelling and it gives those that know her chills. Unseen, Feshi silently urges Cahm to join him and Jadiqa as they make signs to ward off Shadash's potent evil eye.

With confidence restored and a surge of power pumping through his veins with every perfectly timed beat of his heart, Shadash begins to move more expansively. He can feel Erdem's lust and desire and the power he has over the man. It is safe, he thinks, to perform not for the assassin at all, but to concentrate on the other.

Entreri notices the moment the strange dancer begins to slip and he notices when magic begins to permeate the room. His hand drops to his famous emerald dagger. He lets it slip away again when he understands the enchantment is for Erdem alone. He continues to watch the boy with dispassionate gray eyes, his caution invisible. The boy's ease of movement bespeaks hard training and that, he knows, means there must be a modicum of self-discipline in the wretch.

It is only through the efforts of the bard playing sitar that Shadash realizes how much time has passed. The music demands his body to make a graceful end of the dance. Lost in movement and power, he struggles against the sitar's ending melody. But the older bard has more skill, if not more discipline, and Shadash is forced to stop.

The music finally fades and the magic fades with it. He drops to his hands and knees in humble supplication as he has seen Cahm do before. The teahouse is silent for several seconds. Entreri feels no need to applaud and Erdem is utterly exhausted and stunned.

From the floor, Shadash grins secretly into the stone beneath him. He knows he did well. He waits patiently and at last he hears Erdem's hands come together with loud enthusiasm. It is his cue to stand and depart the beam of sunlight beating down from the ceiling.

He is astonished to find his limbs will hardly move. How long did he dance? And then he is horrified to feel a warm, thick, substance dripping onto his knees. He smells... fragrant vanilla.

Cold fear sweeps over his body as he recalls the filled pastries and the presence of his knees against his chest. He can't possibly make a graceful exit.

It is fortunate for him that his fellows understand what has happened. As if it was planned from the beginning, Jadiqa and Feshi advance gracefully to either side of the blond-wigged boy. With smooth motions, they mirror each other as they scoop the still-kneeling Shadash and carry him to the back room.

Safe from their customers' eyes and ears, they dump Shadash on the floor amidst an uproar of silent laughter. Cahm grins as the boy rolls onto his back and they see custard squeezing out of the filmy bodice. "You should have offered them a bite, Shadash!"

"Oh, he'll get plenty of bites," Feshi snorts from underneath muffling hands. "That loud one is going to want more than a sample after that!"

Too tired to protest against the teasing, Shadash only shakes his head. He's alive. He may be utterly drained, but he is alive. "Did any drip on the floor? I felt it drip…!"

In the main room, Erdem and Entreri are joined by Shadash's manager. She informs them with the greatest possible politeness that the lady Cahm is quite exhausted and can only see a visitor for a short time after her performance. Without jealousy, though he surely desires her for himself, Erdem encourages the assassin to see her if he wishes.

A cold look, fit to freeze the noonday sun, chills Erdem and the manager alike. "Call on me when you want to discuss business, not waste my time." The killer flows to his feet and stalks out of the teahouse.

They watch him go, both fearing the wrath of such a powerful man. Erdem takes a steadying drink of his wine. The manager joins him, taking a hold of Entreri's untouched glass of wine.

When his nerves are finally calm, he looks at the manager again. "How short a time and in what capacity?"

The woman smiles knowingly in response; anyone from the Avenue would know only one of the two men would have any interest in 'Lady Cahm'. By her estimation, Shadash was never in any danger. However, Shadash's fear will never allow him to agree.


End file.
